Infected
by Tare-Bear
Summary: Katniss turns her head and regards the classroom. She takes attendance for the teacher and – Oh, no. But she pretends like she doesn't see the glaring empty seat. "Who?" she asks. "Peeta." Katniss knows it's stupid, to pretend that she doesn't know him. "Who?" Madge replies patiently, "Peeta Mellark. He's the baker's son." Her heart sinks. "Oh." Oh, no. *Predates all books.
1. Chapter One

A/N: Beware, this story is slowly tapering toward, with every chapter that passes, angst. There is cuteness and romance, but only second to tragedy. I can't tell you for sure if there will be a happy ending, only that you should stick with it to see. Yes, this is based off of that one chapter I wrote in another story, and it's very different. I am trying a new writing style. What do you think? Worse or better? Thank you for reading, sorry for typos. Reviews are updates. -Taryn(:

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Chapter One

She is in class, merely minding her own business, her gaze transfixed on the window. There is nothing that suggests this day is different from any other day of her life; she will finish this hour, take the papers, shove them into her threadbare rucksack and then find Primrose, walk home with Gale and his brother.. normal. A normal, unextraordinary day, without surprises.

Except, she hears this cough. Not a fake _I'm-trying-to-get-your-attention _sort of cough. Just a cough. Loud and hacking and thick. Katniss' face tightens on the surface, disgusted, memories flooding her mind, of the sick her mother takes care of. And she isn't and probably never will be a healer, but there is something horrible about that _sound_.

She opts to ignore it. Until it just doesn't stop. A cry of a consistent crow; caw, caw, _cawing_. The teacher pauses in the lecture, concern etched into the face of a man who'd never taken the time to frown at the starving children from the Seam before. This captures her as strange and she turns her head, to see – and yes. She is right to assume. The girl is from Town, the blonde hair, which usually is falling down her back in curls, tied on the top of her head messily, and her pale skin strangely sallow.

Everyone is watching her, bent over herself, turned to the side of her desk, two hands clapped over her mouth, chest _heaving_, shaking, retching. She is trembling and crying, and Katniss feels the first prickle of concern touch her beyond her careful mask of indifference, and she sits a little straighter in her chair.

"Delly," the teacher starts, haltingly, and it clicks in Katniss' mind. _Delly Cartwright_. That's why she looks so familiar – despite the fact that she should have known instantly. They've shared a grade after all, and Delly is particularly kind, smiley, and uncaring of prejudice between the Town and the Seam. Though it is not ignorance or unwillingness, or even prejudice within herself, that made her not recognize the long friendly Delly. It is the appearance. The presentation that is not.. _right_.

It is Delly, herself, thinner than she was, somehow pastier, smiles stolen from lips well-made for them.

The girl waves one of her hands at the teacher, vague, dismissive. Still coughing, cawing, _cawing_. Every inhale Delly manages is fleeting and probably painful, and _thick_.. almost.. liquidated. She is gasping and her eyes are running, and she says her words between each sharp sound from behind the hand held awkwardly over her mouth, "I – need – please.. excuse – _me_."

She stands, and doesn't touch her books or bag or wait for permission – which is wrong, very wrong, because Delly always has permission, Delly isn't rude or disrespectful or rebellious – and she flees the classroom.

Everyone is quiet. Someone rises from their seat. Her eyes dance to see who, and then regrets it, when she recognizes Peeta Mellark, moving across the classroom, after Delly. He's stopped at the door by the teacher, who commands him to sit. Which he does, grudgingly. The teacher turns to the class, narrow-eyed and tells them to behave, and then slips out into the hallway.

Almost instantly, as if the room is some sort of teeter-totter, half of the students on one side of the room transfer to the other, doubling up at the desks of their friends, and whispering and chattering and worrying about Delly. Some aren't though, some laugh, some talk about how awful she looks today, how they wouldn't _dream_ of showing up today, looking like her.

Their shallowness makes her feel sick in her stomach, _angry_, because Delly never says anything remotely near what they are whispering about her, and Delly is _sick_, and hurting and they are uncaring; but she won't get involved. The people of Town have always ignored the starving Seam, so she should be used to their impassivity. It is only.. that she thought.. _expected_.. a certain degree of decency. The people from the Seam truly aren't their friends, aren't within their social or economy circle, but – _but_ Delly _is_. She is one of them.

And it doesn't matter.

At least in the Seam, they look out for one another. It isn't conditional, or specific to only _these_ few. It is a general respect for where they come from, no matter how much they hate it, and it is understanding, and compassion.

She doesn't know why she is thinking this; it helps no one, doesn't feed her family, and she can't very well pretend to be Delly's best friend. No. But there is someone, who is. Her head tilts slightly, as subtlety as Katniss can, and angles her eyes toward the opposite side of the classroom, across the way, where she knows _he_ sits.

He is an exception, she allows.

His face is appropriately taunt with worry, eyes focused on the door of the classroom, feet braced against the floor, as though ready to spring up and greet her on her return. Except she doesn't. Come back, that is. Delly is sent home, the teacher tells then and they are let out for the day, five minutes early – _weirder_, still.

The day is strange and off-kilter as she waits out in the school yard for her little sister. Her hand is fidgeting with the shoulder strap of her bag, twisting and twirling, until her fingers are pale and purple and bloodless. She slips her hand free of the trap, then twists the coarse fabric around the appendage again. She is thinking about what happened ten minutes ago, her eyes vague, lost in the grass, and lips pursed is stubbornness; she doesn't _want_ to.

Katniss didn't want to see _it_, hadn't wanted to mention it or point it out, because the very sight had made her stomach twist around itself; and it shouldn't because blood doesn't frighten her, she's slaughtered enough animals to know that blood is just blood, and she's had her hands buried in entrails before, but this is different.

This is human blood.

This is _Delly Cartwright's_ blood.

Katniss had been sitting in the perfect spot, in the back, to the right, behind Delly. She'd seen it when the blonde had flung out that hand, rolling down the sides of her wrist. She saw it, dripping from the lips, across the chin, cupped on her tongue gawkily, rolling over her stark white teeth as waves, with each violent _caw._

Drowning, hacking, gasping for breath.

A shiver runs up Katniss' spine and she shrugs her shoulders in complaint. Her eyes refocus on the world. Students mill about, just released, excited that the day of learning is over, but moving slow, lazily, because for most, this means it's time for work.

One group passes her, slow, talking loud – Delly's name is falling from everyone's lips.

Somehow this makes her _nervous_, makes her stomach feel sicker.

Her thoughts go to peculiar places, untraveled routes, of maybe going to see her. Perhaps, just pop by the Cartwright's house, make up some inane excuse, and confirm if she actually saw what she thought she did. Because that would fix her stomach, surely. That would soothe the knot in her throat, tugging tighter each time she recalls a faded memory of Delly smiling at her, or waving, or offering a hand of aid in class projects or gym activities.

But that all collapses when Primrose shows up. Her little sister reminds her that she has more important thing to do, that there is a family – two, counting the Hawthornes – that are needing her, depending on her care and presence and there are plenty, more welcome, persons that will show up at Delly's house, offering kind words and get-well-soon phrases. Katniss is not much good at those thing anyway; she is sure she will scowl half the time, feel out of place, awkward and tug at the end of her braid as she spoke to Delly's parent when they answered the door, perplexed at the sight of their visitor..

Yes. It is better to just go home.

She greets Gale, Rory, and Prim as she always does. Her smile is thin, but they don't expect more than that. She walks between Gale and Prim, hand still wrestling the bag's strap, her head held high and her eyes steady on the sidewalk in front of her. Once they reach beyond Town, the atmosphere grows easier, and Rory begins to tease Prim about some recess folly that happened today.

Gale turns his head, considers Katniss' expression, and watches, almost in intrigue, her hand fidgeting. "I heard that Delly made quite a performance today in class," he says, lightly, and out of the earshot of their younger siblings.

"Where from?" she asks, setting her jaw. She's not angry. She shouldn't be. Yet, irritation is zinging in her blood. Or rather, she feels bugged.. pestered.. _pressured_. Gale most likely heard it from everyone, and could not _help_ hearing it as he walked through the yard.

She just would rather hear him answer her questions, then have him ask her questions.

She doesn't want to lie to him. If he asks her what she _saw_, she'd have no choice but tell him what she saw. And she's not sure enough to share.. not even with Gale, her best friend, the person she illegally hunts and poaches and sells things with. _That_ is how uneasy the whole thought makes her.

Katniss gnaws on the inside of her cheek, and allows her hand to fall from her shoulder strap.

Gale gives a careful, _cautious_, shrug. He is watching her. No doubt wondering what is wrong with her.

"I heard it from Jarek first. Then Thom told me all about it. I just thought, since you were actually there, you knew something those numb skulls didn't," he replies, easily. Unfazed by her unexpected behavior.

She wonders what _is_ wrong her. _It is just blood. _She's seen a man vomit blood once, out the corner of her eye, as she fled the house, and her mother took care of the man. But he lived... he lived... and she isn't so sure.. and she doesn't want to _think_ about it..

"She was coughing," Katniss says, and is glad to find her voice level and natural. _Something_ about this day has to be normal, and if it can't be her thoughts, than at least she can appear composed outwardly. "Probably the flu or a cold. Minor stuff. You know how everyone likes to exaggerate."

"Yeah," Gale agrees. "Town is all about drama."

She is glad when her and her sister reach home and there is no one there to discuss it with. The evening passes quickly, uneventfully, normally, and she is relaxed by the time she is undoing her braid, and dressing for bed. Primrose is doing the usually ritual, cleaning father's old shaving mirror, though since he is not here to use it anymore, there is nothing to wipe away but what she wet it with.

Her dreams are of screeching crows. She is chasing them, _furious_. Somehow she keeps missing, all her arrows going askew from their mark at the last moment, as if some invisible hand reached out and flicked them to the side, or it is simply that the crow dives out of the way, and takes flight in a flapping, cawing mass of black wings. Near the end, murky in the way only dreams are and shrouded from conscious thought, she knows she got one, hit one straight through the throat, and she races to the place it fell. What she finds is a slow death, as the bird wails, voice strangely high-pitched, human, _girlish, _the sound thin and cringe-worthy and gurgling, as the blood gushed from the wound in its neck and out of its mouth.

She wakes suddenly, holding her breath, and the day begins like that, in a slow, dreading, trudge. She knifes her way onto her back, before pulling herself from the bed, feeling sweaty and cold. But when she presses her knuckles into her cheek, it is flushed and her pulse is ramming in her wrists. She shakes herself. It is early. The sun has not risen and Gale is waiting for her.

By the time she gets to their meeting place beyond the fence, the horizon is the pale gray of pre-dawn. "Point the way," she tells Gale, who evidently has been waiting some time, and that stands silently and leads at her words. After awhile the cold of the morning wanes and his smile comes free and sudden; hers, too, though she keeps scoping the sky for crows.

They get a fairly good haul from the traps and she manages to shoot a squirrel. "We'll take this to bakery after school," says Gale, stuffing it into the game bag, already skinned and prepared for sale. She agrees with the dip of her chin.

After splitting the goods, they go to their respective houses to change and grab their school things, and their siblings, too. Primrose is ready, as always, sitting demurely on the end of their bed they share, while the room is dark and their mother slumbers on. Katniss glances at the woman worriedly; she had considered, briefly, last night, mentioning what she saw to her mother, a healer by all rights, but had stalled herself, because she still held a grudge toward her mother, and didn't want to admit need of help, nor could she find it in herself to mention Delly out loud.

She figures it is in the past. Tomorrow was strange, but today is new, it is bound to be normal. A safe, familiar normal, because she dislikes new. New is bad and foreign and she is _unprepared_ for change.

But that's ridiculous, she tells herself. Delly Cartwright's well-being has no influence over her life.

Primrose skids over the gravel, waving at neighbors, greeting other kids also on their way to school and Katniss follows much more slowly, keeping her eyes trained on the head of blonde among a sea of black. Gale jogs up to her side, grinning, tugging a Rory by the arm behind him. He lets go of his brother once he is at her side and he tells Rory to _stay is sight_. Katniss offers Rory a smile, and warns him not to get Primrose is trouble, or any bad situations.

The boy's eleven year old face grows appalled in a comical way. He is walking backwards, having stalled in his flee to face them, and he throws up a arm, crossing it diagonally over his chest and abdomen. His eyes are grey and shining and proud and – _indignant_, like someone else she knows – he says, quite smartly, "I'm her knight. I protect her from danger." Rory's chins drops low again and his expression becomes half a scowl. "I don't drag her into it."

Gale reaches out a hand and ruffles his hair. "That's right." A pause, as Rory rights his hair with his palm and Gales gazes over his head. His eyes center back on his brother, mocking. "I think I see Marcus Arbuckle pulling her braids right now. Better get to it, Mr. Knight." Rory is gone in a heartbeat.

Katniss' eyes fly up to check this claim, too, and wonders, fleetingly if she needs to have a talk with this Marcus. Only she finds that it is lie, and she shoots Gale a disgruntled look. "You don't have to tease him like that."

He is smiling like a goon. "Why? Do you like all that sappy stuff?"

"Prim does," Katniss says, indifferent. She tugs her rucksack higher up onto her shoulder, and there is no further comment or thought about the subject. Not until they get to Town, and she senses instantly that there is something wrong. Prim is not in sight, at first, as her eyes flicker through the mill of children and teenagers, Seam and Town. She feels a wave of gratitude when she spots Rory, holding Prim's hand and dragging her back toward her and Gale. A knight, maybe not, but sweet and good, and _observant_, that he is.

Gale has risen to the tension and is looking around the square, with hard, judging eyes. "Why are there so many?"

_Peacekeepers_, he means.

"I don't know," Katniss replies and pulls Primrose to her and holds her by the shoulders all the way until they get to the school. Fortunately, the Peacekeepers don't even notice the day to day traffic of the district, off to work or school or the mines; they all look preoccupied, and _stressed_. Why? Her and Gale share a hundred curious and uncertain glances, but neither can answer that question; no one can, as everyone murmurs and frets and whispers, the sighs of their breaths a breeze among the crowd.

There are theories, both ridiculous and rational, that spring to thought. Something to do with the Hunger Games? That's rational, because there are never _that_ many Peacekeepers within 12 except for on reaping day. There is a nervous titter of _executions _and _punishment _rolling from tongues, and she feels her face fall deeper into the mask. She thinks of hunting this morning, recalls the squirrel in Gale's game bag, stored somewhere in his house, where Hazelle and Posy and Vick are staying, oblivious to the need for obscurity.

After walking Primrose to her classroom, Katniss find her first period and enters the room that is stiflingly tense and queasy and.. _sad_. Her eyes scope the room for Madge, and the blonde waves her to the usual seat in the back. Katniss is careful when she sits, dreading, because there is a gleam in the back of Madge's blue eyes, that suggests today won't be normal.

"Delly's dead, Katniss," says Madge, point blank. She was never one for pretty refinements.

Katniss nods, staring at Madge, not breaking the stare. She wraps her head around the concept – it is not difficult. Almost too easy, actually, to accept the fact that the bubbly and smiley Delly is _dead, _stone cold, six feet under, _gone._

Her voice is level. "How?" she asks.

Madge looks around the classroom, pressing her lips together. She leans toward Katniss, over the small isle between their desks and keeps her voice low. "I'm not really allowed to tell anyone. I mean, I only was ease-dropping on my father.. and I'm not even supposed to know. They said she was sick. But they said it weird. Like it wasn't a normal kind of sick."

"An epidemic?" Katniss offers, remembering she heard the word from her mother before, when they'd gotten an onslaught of sick over the course of two weeks, for the same symptoms, nonstop.

"No," Madge says, voice soft, "_worse_."

"But... Delly is just one person," Katniss objects.

Madge's eyebrow arches. "Is she?" and there is a deeper meaning to her voice; it is sadder, somehow.

Katniss turns her head and regards the classroom. She takes attendance for the teacher and –

_Oh, no._

But she pretends like she doesn't see the glaring empty seat. Katniss turns back to Madge and her mask is carefully in place; a little bemused, indifferent to the right degree, and curious, too. Underneath she is frowning. Her heart _sinks_, but she can't say why. It hadn't sunk for Delly Cartwright.

"Who?" she asks.

"Peeta."

"Who?" Katniss knows it's stupid, to pretend that she doesn't know him. She does know him. She _owes_ him, a dept for her life, for her family's life, _Primrose's_ sweet life, or perhaps, just a thank you, since she does not have anything of worth to offer.

Madge does not see beyond the mask. The only friend, aside Gale, that Katniss has, does not show even a _smidgen_ of surprise or suspicion toward the fact that Katniss can't recall the simple name of a classmate she's had for years – not to mention that he is one of the most liked.

"Peeta Mellark," says Madge. _Glumly_. "He's the baker's son."

"Oh."

_Oh, no._

"Yeah. He's really sweet."

Katniss nods, unsure of how to reply. Madge and Katniss don't talk boys.

Madge adds, and quickly, because the teacher is walking into the room, readying to call them to attention, "I heard my father say to the Peacekeepers that they were to take into custody ever person that visited Delly yesterday, or that had physical contact to her. That's probably where he is. Delly and him were always close."

Katniss nods, numbly, then turns in her seat and responds, "Here," when her name is called.

Nothing happens when Peeta's name is called; silence, stillness, glances passed between his real friends, and those who have a _right_ to worry. Katniss shouldn't be feeling so.. strange, and it must be because if he dies, then she'll never of had the chance to thank him. Which is _important_, of course.

Important enough to linger over that frivolous, _tedious_ wording in Madge's sentence? "...p_hysical contact... always close.. Delly and him.." _But no. She doesn't care about his life, and his.. physical contacts.. it is just.. she has this image in her mind, gory and vomit-inducing and it is him kissing Delly and she has blood in her mouth and he is.. appalled. All of this is _appalling_.

She has more trouble than usual focusing on the day's lessons. The whole school is having trouble, as rumors flutter through ears, and eyes brighten at the prospect of petty excitement, and everyone _notices_. Everyone is observant today; they notice Peeta is gone, they notice their teacher that had went after Delly is gone, a boy from three grades below is gone. What makes it all so meaningful, _noticeable_, is the fact that none of the teachers are mentioning the lost students, or the dead one, at that, or the Peacekeepers that have so suddenly took up resident in District 12.

At lunch she can't help thinking it's a good thing she didn't go over to the Cartwright's after school. What would she do if the Peacekeepers showed up to her house to take her into custody? What would Gale do? Something drastic if she knows him. And she does. Primrose might cry and that would just tear her hearts to shreds, anguished at the thought that Prim is in pain or is suffering. Her mother, would try to placate and talk to the Peacekeeper, or just stare with those ghost blue eyes – it wouldn't matter, she would fail Katniss no matter what she did.

It is the last class of the day, and she is staring out her favorite window, with its perfect view of an oak tree that stands tall and majestic in the middle of the school yard. Her eyes are tracing over the branches, her thoughts are wandering, _wondering_ if she were to climb it, which branch would she take first, how high could she go, and all the nonessential things to distract herself from the fact that today won't be normal – and tomorrow might not be either, and she is bracing herself for _anything_.

She almost lets out an exasperated sound, at the hint of noise to her side, from another student –

It is sudden, sharp and she assumes it is a cough. Her skin grows clammy, while her fingers wrap into a fist and she turns her head, in time to hear the real sound it is –

It is Gins Pander, from Town, who squeals and jumps from her seat and hugs the figure that has timidly emerged from the classroom door. Peeta Mellark smiles, ruefully at the girl, patting her back, and shooting the substitute teacher apologetic glances, for interrupting the lecture. Gins is chattering under her breath as the two go to their seats, side by side to each other. Katniss hears only a gist of it; _so worried, thought the worst, everyone was saying.. you're okay.. couldn't believe.. with Delly and.. you.. gone. _Katniss stares. Knows she shouldn't though. She is not even being subtle; it is a blatant, guarded stare across the room, her eyes fixed on his expression as he reassures his friend.

She _notes_ things.

She notes them, as though she is able to tell that they are new attributes.

But that would suggest she knows Peeta, and she doesn't. They've never even talked before.

And still, she sees the nervous run in his fingers against his desktop, she sees his leg bouncing underneath the desk – not like the energetic jitter he sometimes has – it is an impatient thing.. and she starts when his eyes suddenly flicker from Gins' face, over the blonde's head, and his eyes meet hers. At first, she sees that he does not realize it; Peeta glances up, then down again, lazily, on instinct, really, but in a jolt his eyes fly up again, wider than before. Because he realizes that _she_ is already looking.

Today really is the day for noticing things, isn't it?

She stares at him and doesn't turn away. Katniss refuses to feel the heat pooling in the skin of her neck and shoulders. She waits for him to look away. She's too stubborn to appear abash or smile or – do anything but scowl, because that is a _safe_ expression. It is an easy movement of muscles in her face, when she panics, faced with those scorched blue eyes. In a matter of a second, running through her thoughts, she recalls all those other times, when she'd catch him looking her way and he'd turned away, sometimes red cheeked, other times running a hand through his hair.

She won't do that. She _refuses_ to do that.

Peeta is bewildered at the most and _warm_, at the least, his eyes somehow brightening. She does not know how to describe it. Can't understand it, really, as her eyes harden into quarters in return.

She wonders if there is a reason he holds her gaze for the first time in all their life at that moment. Is it because he feels bold, faced with his friend's recent death, or because he feels like he's just _survived_ something by walking away from the custody of the Peacekeepers unharmed and not a tribute of the Hunger Games? Does that attribute also, to the small, barely noticeable, tug of the corner of his lip, and the indistinguishable tip of his head, before he returns his attention to Gins?

Did she _imagine_ those things?

No. That would imply she wanted that to happen. That she hoped to see them and so her imagination decided to make her feel like it'd happened. But she didn't. She doesn't know why she was staring at him in the first place, let alone what she wants from him – which is nothing, because that would only mean she owed him more and she _hates_ owing people – and so she couldn't have imagined it.

She doesn't think about it too much; doesn't let herself. She simply attributes it to what Madge said, not her, but Madge. That he was sweet and he was merely acknowledging the fact that she was there.

She is relived when they are dismissed. She stands, pushing out a breath, and pulls the rucksack onto her shoulder, and sighs as she slips through the rows of desks, her eyes unfocused, and her thoughts on what she is going to do when she gets home, how she should explain things to Primrose – her little sister is bound to hear _something_ – and what Gale and her might have to do, if the Peacekeepers plan a long stay.

By chance, she hears Peeta's voice, talking –

No. A cough. Her head lifts almost instantly and she spots him, walking, a fist against his lips. He's smiling, though. It was only one cough and he doesn't look upset about it; but she isn't the only one who looked up and is eying him. He doesn't notice; or _pretends_ not to notice.

Katniss can hear Madge's words in her head. One sticks out the most. _Worse._

She decides that she has to keep her distance, even more so, from people. She can't get sick; _can't_ die. Primrose can't get sick either, and she is always talking to people, helping them and offering her hands for aid._ Like Delly. _Is that why Delly got sick? Got this somehow _ominous_ illness that has led to her death at only sixteen?

And she didn't look like she did the day she went home and never came back. Katniss had seen her on Tuesday, the day before, and Delly looked no different, she was normal.. yet, on Wednesday, Katniss looked at her and didn't even _recognize_ her. If she could get that sick, that fast, then maybe there is a good reason there are Peacekeepers in the district. It would be the first, and she almost.. she almost feels.. something.. she almost feels relieved.. that there is a government, that there is the Capitol –

Yes, she hates them. Who doesn't? They are cruel and unusual and petty to the _widest_ degree. But they're.. smart.. some of them. They know medicine, the real stuff. They know how to figure out the mysterious of the body, heal it, and know these things, beyond the knowledge of her mother.

She can't tell a person what makes you sick beyond a bug or a virus. She knows infections, sure, but what Delly had.. couldn't have been.. Katniss supposes it could have been a _very_ severe case of pneumonia.. but that seems unlikely.. it was too sudden..

"Katniss?"

Katniss lifts her head, eyes calm, but then she sees the face of her companion and she frowns.

What could he want?

What does she _say_?

Is a thank you, good for right now? She'd never done it before because there was never a proper opportunity, she either was busy, or he had friends, and she had Primrose or Madge or Gale, and –

She looks around.

There is no one else in the hallway.

Primrose is outside waiting, no doubt, with Gale and Rory, _wondering_ where she is.

They'll worry too. She knows it. They'll think of the rumors today, and glance toward Town and consider the possibility that she got sick or something.. _something_..

"Are you.. alright?"

Fuck. Now he thinks she's.. well probably just vague or something.

"Yeah. I'm fine," she says. Her voice wavers though. It betrayed her.

She curses in her mind and straightens her shoulders and looks him square in the eyes.

Only.. it's that _he_ doesn't look alright. And she panics, a little, on the inside. Not for him. Not really. She panics for herself, because she doesn't know what to say, or how to possibly soothe the.. _upset_ in his eyes, and the off center of his face, that is stretched into some smile that is half-pain and half-hope.

Katniss just stares; not scowling, not with her jaw clenched, just stares.

"I–" Peeta starts, falters, and his smile widens, embarrassed, his cheeks red when his eyes drop to his hands in front of him. He looks sad. He looks _scared_. "I.. uh.. made a promise to Delly."

Katniss finds the strap of her bag on her shoulder and twists it around her fingers so tightly she feels the instant, icy prickles of dying nerves, from the lack of blood. She fights to keep a level face – he's talking about Delly, and it must be hard, and this must be something _private_, which makes her not sure why he would share this promise with _her_, of all people, and she doesn't want to be rude and ditch him here –

But Primrose is waiting and Gale and Rory –

"A promise?" Katniss echos, quietly.

Peeta shifts, peaking up at her through his eyelashes. Sheepish, almost. But no. He clears his throat, seems to get control of his bashful side and the pain –

A loss flits over her expression.. something traumatic..

No. She's reading too much into this.

He simply clears his throat, lifts himself to his full height, and tells her, "Delly is one of the... few people who I trusted.. to tell. This secret. Or, well, it's not a secret. It's just.. _you_."

"Me?"

She does not see where this is going. She is _worried_ about where this is going.

His hand reaches for his hair and drags through the blonde curls. He's still smiling.

And it _bugs_ her.

He is smiling; when she knows, knows it _so much_, that he doesn't want to be smiling.

"Is this.." she has just as much trouble speaking as him, apparently. She's always known Peeta as a good speaker though. He's confident and sweet and.. Well, she's Katniss. Maybe she's not talkative, but she's strong and stubborn, and she _will_ speak. "Is this about.. the bread?"

Confusion roils onto his face, eyebrow drawn tight. "The bread?"

Katniss can't believe the rush of momentary, uncontrolled, disappointment in her; he forgot.

And she can't believe she let him _see it_. He saw her face falter, sadden momently, and her eyes frown and her lips press together, and he saw the disappointment; and somehow that reminded him. Or so it seems, because his eyes widen, too and he says, "Oh. The bread.. from when we were kids. I remember. And no, it's not about that."

Katniss shifts. _Yes. Of course. Alright. _"So.. what is this about? Because my sister's waiting.. and –"

"And Gale," Peeta finishes, watching her face carefully.

Her eyes narrow. "And Gale."

"Right." Peeta looks to the floor, breathes, –

_He's nervous_, she realizes.

Why is he nervous?

Why is it so hard to just spit out whatever it is he's trying to say?

"I like you," he says, rushed, the smile gone, for once – but he doesn't look sad. He looks anxious and serious and_ not kidding. _"And I mean that in.. the way you probably don't think I do.. because I.." A cringe. "I think you're pretty.. no. Beautiful. I told Delly I'd tell you, because I've been nagging her about it for who knows how long and she has always.. encouraged.. and she said she was sad she wouldn't be here to see.. and.. I'm – That's all."

Her mouth opens, then closes. She processes. Looks for loopholes. Tries to find the other motives behind this.. confession. But there is none. She sees nothing that conveys insincerity, or that suggests he is telling her these things as a joke or.. for anything other than the reason he gave.

She is not sure how she feels, or what she should say, or what he hopes for –

And she wonders when Delly made him promise this –

"Katniss!"

Both Peeta and Katniss turn at the sound of Primrose's voice. Her sister stands at the end of the hall, propping open the door, and behind her back Katniss can see Gale and Rory, expressionless, looking at her, standing next to this boy.

_Too close_, to the boy, she realizes, and takes a startled step back. When did that happen? It must have been him. Not her. She looks back to him, but he is staring off toward the wall on their right, tugging at the zipper of his jacket.

She opens her mouth, looking at him, eying him in concern and _curiosity_ and uncertainty, then closes it.

"I'm coming Prim," she says, turning away, her back to Peeta and hurrying down the hall to the door. She takes Prim's hand into hers and shoulders passed the Hawthornes and can only think of _escape_.

They are halfway through Town when Gale gets a word into things. "What was that?"

_Lie_. "I don't know," she says.

"We thought something happened," Prim pipes up from Katniss' opposite side.

She smiles at her sister, and tries to make it warm, and hugs her to her waist. "I promise if something happens, I'll make sure you're with me and we're safe."

Prim nods and returns the smile.

No one speaks until they reach the Seam, and that is only Rory and Prim who say goodbye. Katniss tells Gale not to take the squirrel, because the Peacekeepers and he nods curtly in her direction.

It's only when Katniss reaches the house that she realizes she never, not once, had not even remembered her own promise, or rather decision, – and she did, she supposes, a little, she just never spoke it or considered it relevant in the situation – of how she is never going to marry or have children or have those kinds of relationships. That would have been the response for Peeta. Is _still_ the response. And she resolves herself on that; if he wants a reply for what he said today, tomorrow at school, then she'll have one.


	2. Chapter Two

A/N: So many nice reviews and alerts! Thank you, to everyone. I hope you're not disappointed in this chapter. Thank you for reading, sorry for typos. Reviews are updates. -Taryn(:

* * *

Chapter Two

_Two Weeks Later_

The world is sleeping and the night is silent.

She flies from shadow to shadow, both hands clutching one of her elbows, and she is lost. Hopelessly lost. It's stupid, too. Every house looks the same to her. They are all old and gray and covered in coal dust – she's never even been to the Seam before. It is sad and she knows it. But she doesn't have time to _dwell_, now.

Her father will notice her absence soon enough.

"Katniss," she says, as though the name will bring the girl running. Or at the very least set off some sort of memory, that tells her _which_ house is her friend's. She came for a reason. She came because of the _guilt_ that is eating her from the inside out. It has teeth of ice, tearing and sheering its way through her stomach, and making her feel _squirmy_.

And she has always hated feeling... _superior_.

She isn't better than everyone else, though. She _isn't_.

Katniss has always been her friend; she doesn't care about prejudice, doesn't care that Madge has money and dresses and bows and a bigger house and food.. she doesn't _care_, and Madge knows that if Katniss knew something, something.. as _important_.. she would tell her.

She can't stand back and watch.

No. She can't. _Won't_. Madge has to do something while she still can.

She has to tell someone about Delly if Peeta won't.

The few doctors in District 12 are all expensive and professional and will tattle on her; if she asks too many questions she does not doubt that the Peacekeepers will step in and her father will not be glad for it. There is only one other person she knows that is close to a doctor, that is a healer, and she is conveniently the mother of her _only_ friend.

But the night is dark and cold and she is turning in circles. She eyes the houses, all void of light and shuttered from the wind. There seems to be a _chill_ in the air, that goes beyond the fall weather. Everyone is huddling away from the threat of the Peacekeepers. They know something is wrong, even if two weeks has passed; they think it has to do with the government, they think that they will have to worry about withdrawing and making to be meek from the Peacekeepers, because the Capitol is upset, because their president is _worried_ about District 12 and so he filled it with extra troops.

It makes Madge fretful_, _to know that they have it wrong.

It isn't _worry_.

They aren't there for _them_.

Not for..

Suddenly, Madge remembers Primrose. The sweet, young, and darling little sister and she remembers Katniss telling her about a goat named Lady.. and -

Yes. That's a goat in the yard, tied up. That _has_ to be it.

She runs to the door, and all she can think is that Primrose...

_They aren't worried about Primrose, either._

* * *

There is a sudden banging, that is rough and _loud_ and at the curve of Prim's knee, Buttercup springs to his paws, hissing and flatting torn ears against his flat, unappealing face. He is making a fuss and yowling and Katniss kicks him off the bed in her haste to her feet.

Katniss is awake in an instant, drawing from the urgency of the knock. She fumbles to pull on some sort of coverage – anything that offers more than her pajamas provide and the first thing in reach is her father's hunting jacket, laying across the dented kitchen table. She pulls it on, shoving her arm in each hole and she clutches it closed over her chest.

The knock continues; louder, _insistent_, desperate.

She doesn't bother calling through to see who it is; she merely grips the knob and straightens herself as much as she can. And she expects a Peacekeeper, or Gale – and he is dying, or Hazelle is, or one of the kids, _has_ to be dying for his urgency – but it is neither. The figure is too small and though the night is inky black, clinging to the person's face and color, the shape is undeniably female, and Madge's hand on her wrist is tight and frightened, and commanding _silence_.

Katniss allows Madge to push her back into her own house, and she watches as the blonde closes the door and presses a pale finger into her lips, when Primrose moves to rise from the bed for a greeting. Their mother is up, too, staring, squinting – Katniss wonders if her mother will grow upset, and assume that she has invited a friend over at this late hour. It's not something she would do, since Gale is her only friend to invite, but her mother merely sits up and watches Madge closely, as if seeing someone else, someone she _knows_.

Madge is in the same clothes she wore the previous day at school, and her hair is slightly askew and her chest is rising and falling heavily, but not rapidly, as she leans into the door, and meets Katniss' observant stare.

There is more worry in Madge's face than anything.

Katniss doesn't think she's ever seen Madge in the Seam before, let alone her own house and it is off. The most off thing that has happened recently – right up there on the list with Peeta and his confession of liking for her, about two weeks ago. But she is Madge's only friend, she supposes. If Madge were in trouble, she would seek out a friend.. and though Katniss never considered them _those_ kinds of friends, she wouldn't turn Madge out, looking as wary as she does.

If there's a reason she came it has to be important.

There has been no trouble in District 12, that Katniss knows of. The Peacekeeper all left at the end of the week, after Delly's passing, and there were a few others that died strangely, she knew, but not their names, nor faces. Everything had fallen into a stillness, without questions, and Madge never mentioned anything new, nor had Katniss been faced with Peeta Mellark – mostly due to her avoidance of him for the passed weeks – and Gale and her never had to stop hunting in worry of being caught.

She'd thought everything had gone back to normal.

The fretful light in Madge's face tells her different.

"What's wrong?" Katniss asks.

In answer, Madge throws up her arm and rips back her sleeve and shows a bandage at the crook of her elbow. Nothing more than a plain, neat, and white covering and Katniss stares, then lifts her eyes, _trying_ to find the meaning, but missing it. Madge grows frustrated. "A shot, Katniss. My father gave me a shot a week ago and promised me I wouldn't get sick. _Like the rest. _He said it just like that."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," admits Madge. Her eyes go to Mrs. Everdeen. "Did you hear of Delly? Did you hear what happened to her? How she died? Have you ever heard of that? Do _you_ know what's going on?"

Katniss turns to her mother and wills her to speak. She does, slowly. Pale lips moving precisely and measured, and her voice is that of a healer's composure. "I didn't hear. You can tell me, and I will see if I know."

Madge nods, draws in a breath, then glances Prim's way. "She can't hear."

"But!" Prim objects and Katniss shakes her head. She turns on her heels, and picks up the _meowing_ Buttercup and shoves him into Prim's arms and directs her into the only other room of their house – a bathroom. It is not wholly unpleasant and it won't be for so long, she figures, and the cat will keep her company. It is better than sending her out alone in the cold night, or taking the time to run her to the Hawthornes.

She pauses in leaving, as Prim takes a seat onto the edge of their makeshift bath – a round, wooden container big enough to curl up in – and she reaches out a hand to strokes Prim's hair, ruffled from sleep, and her palm easily flattens the sticking up sections. It is late. Prim still looks tired and she hugs the cat to her chest, drawing a chin across the sickly yellow fur. _Young_, still. Not even twelve, yet. Katniss feels her heart twist, and _knows_ that whatever shot Madge has just been given, she is going to get it for Prim, too. "I'll let you know when you can come out," she promises, ghosting her lips over Primrose's forehead, and then departing.

Once she returns to the main area of the house, Madge and her mother are sitting at the kitchen table. There is a candle sitting between them, that her mother must of lit, and it sends long, licking apparitions up the sides of their faces; yellow and orange and flickering every so often. It makes them look drawn from and exhausted, and Katniss forces herself to sink calmly into the chair at the end of the table. She draws her jacket tightly to her neck and hopes the smell of pine is enough to harden her.

Mrs. Everdeen tips her head to Madge in an indication to speak.

Madge draws in deep breath again. Her hands are on top of the table, wringing together, and her lip rolls between her teeth a couple of times. She is nervous, she is fretful, she is _pained_. No. Not pained, but disgusted. And her face is an exact replica of Peeta's, from two weeks past, right down the the sheen of something.. of upset... of emotional and mental _upset_ that has off balanced them.

"I knew Delly, sort of. She's always been clean and she took care of herself and she got enough to eat." Madge cringes slightly, probably worrying if that mention might have hit something sensitive. It doesn't. There is no sensitives. There is only hard truths that are faced already, every day, in the reality of the world. "Delly wouldn't go anywhere forbidden and she doesn't eat anything that could have been tainted.. and.." She glances between Katniss and her mother. "The other victims were all from town, too."

"Others?"

"Not a lot. There were only three before Delly and then there was two more the night after. In the past week there have been five. The first three was an old man, and a Peacekeeper and an infant. Then Delly.. after her it was her teacher, and his daughter. I don't know much.. not a lot. I know the old man gave it to the Peacekeeper, and the infant must have given it to Delly, because it was Delly's cousin.."

"Tell me about the manner of her death, that's all," Mrs. Everdeen prompts softly, sliding a hand across the table and gripping Madge's. The mayor's daughter looks up, slightly lost, almost surprised to see Mrs. Everdeen there, as if she's forgotten.

She swallows, nods, and is _determined_.

"Peeta told me," Madge admits. "I wasn't there. He was there.. when it happened, when Delly died. Him and her parents and her little brother. It was awful, he told me, really bad. She was still coughing, and she said she'd been coughing all day. It started as a tickle, in her throat, and then she felt – well, Peeta said she told them that she felt like she was _choking_."

"These are the early symptoms?"

"Yes."

"And what next? What happens next?"

"When she ran out of class, she went to the girl's bathroom, and was vomiting."

"Blood?"

"I think so."

"What else, Madge?"

"Peeta said.. he said her nose started to bleed. And it wouldn't stop." Madge has her eyes fixed on the woman's face, that is smooth and attentive, and Katniss sits at her place, silently listening. She feels a tug, of pride, and of jealousy, that her mother is being so serious right now, and because of the fact that she has not seen her mother so focused, on anything, or anyone – and she only wishes Primrose could receive such attention from her. But this isn't about Prim. This is about Delly, and the shot, and what Peeta said to Madge.

"Did she have bruises?" Mrs. Everdeen asks.

"I-I don't know."

"Go on then."

Madge screws her eyes shut. "You know Delly, she cries sometimes. More than most people. She thought she was dying. Peeta said she couldn't talk about anything else but that she is _dying, _and she feels dreadful, and her throat feels on fire. He says she didn't _notice_. That she was crying and gasping and coughing up blood only, and then the next thing he knew there was blood, in her tears."

"Blood from the eyes?" Katniss speaks for the first time, her lips twisting in her distaste. She imagines the sight, standing over Delly, bright and cheerful Delly, laying there and she is one of your oldest friends, and she is telling you, _promising_ you that she is dying and she is making you make promises to her, and the next thing you know there is blood welling out of her, from everywhere and there is no hope to press it back in..

She hardens herself to the image and shunts the shudder that wants to roll over her flesh.

Madge has reopened her eyes and she nods, slowly. "He says she didn't notice at first, but when her mother pointed it out.. and it got worse.. her eyes were pink, then they got redder, and redder, until they blotted out her pupils and irises and she was _screaming_," Madge is whispering now, her words an exact quote. "She was saying it burned. That it felt like fire in her eyes, and she tried to claw at them and he had to hold her down until her father came to do it and he left, the room, but it was only a few minutes later, that she was gone."

"The eyes," Mrs. Everdeen starts, considering, "is that what finished her off?"

"Peeta said that he can't get the image of her from his mind.. that he thinks she drowned, really, because there was blood pooled in her mouth, and still falling from her nose, when they took the body. She was gray and pale and blind, scarlet eyed. And.. blood from her ears, not a lot, though." Madge leans further over the wooden table, clutching at Mrs. Everdeen's hand, and her eyes are _beseeching_. "Does _any_ of this sound familiar? Is this really as bad as it seems? Is it contagious? Where does it come from? Can it be cured?"

Katniss' thoughts swam with the same questions. She's never imagined something so horrible, or that could happen here. It is strange, that it starts in town; in the cleaner and better supplied half of the district. If the disease could conquer Delly, a well fed, not malnourished, young girl at the peak of what health is considered around here, how fast would it burn through the skinny and moneyless children of the Seam, and the adults, too? They can't afford shots – not if they come at the price she expects.

Mrs. Everdeen looks deep in thought. Katniss recognizes confusion in the depths of her eyes, and there is something else, stronger than confusion, and it is _fear_. "I don't know, Madge. Part of it sounds familiar, but it seems, different.. more violent and progressive. You say she was vomiting? Were there any other problems? Internally?"

"I can't know. I didn't talk to her."

Katniss purses her lips. She thinks about it. She thinks about Prim, curled up on the edge of the bathtub, cradling the ugliest cat in the world. Her mind flits to impossibly bleak sights; Prim, coughing up blood, crying scarlet tears, drowning in her own blood, filling her lungs and there is nothing Katniss can do but watch as her sister's body betrays her...

"Peeta did," she murmurs, lifting her head and looking to Madge "Peeta could know about other symptoms that he didn't tell you about," her eyes sweep from her friend to her mother, "and that just might be the missing pieces that confuse you."

"Who is this Peeta? Do you think he would be willing to share?" Mrs. Everdeen inquires.

"He's the baker's son–"

"And he'd tell us," Madge cut in, certain. "He'd tell Katniss."

_What is that supposed to mean?_

"He can be trusted?"

"Yes," Madge says.

Katniss doesn't respond.

Her mother's eyes glaze over, and eventually she nods. "Bring this boy over tomorrow after school, and I will speak to him directly. It is safer that we don't let others overhear us talking of this or let the Peacekeepers know we are poking at something that is not ours. Yes?"

Madge nods and Katniss dips her chin, too lost in thought to really pay attention. She turns to Madge. "Did your father tell you anything about the shot? Are they going to release it to the public?"

Her eyes are flashing blue fish, gleaming in the light, _briefly_ jumping out at the two Everdeens, bright with guilt, _burning_ with remorse before she snaps them shut. "He said that only certain people get it. And I wouldn't.. I wouldn't have let him do it if I'd known.. I feel awful, knowing that I'm getting this special treatment, that I could be standing here next month, watching as everyone I know dies, and I'm not sick, I'm healthy and I'm just watching.. them.. _go_."

Katniss can't blame her. Gale would, she knows, but she can't blame Madge for this; not when the girl has snuck out and risked running through Town to get here, that is at that moment filled with Peacekeepers that are not native, who could have taken her for someone else, and punished her for something, as she is out in the middle of the night, _young_ and running. Not to mention Madge found her house – a place she has never been before – and she was willing to share things, that one would think Peeta might of asked her to keep to herself.. but she did the wrong thing, for the right reason.

And she came. It is merely the fact that she came in the first place, and told them there is a shot, and that there _is_ something to worry about. Katniss is grateful for that. So she doesn't hesitate to return the short hug that is offered, once Madge finds herself back at the door. The blonde apologizes for waking them and promises to help with Peeta – _"Since you two have never met,_" and Katniss nods and pretends and is too worried about this new threat in her life to care.

Primrose is asleep when Katniss goes to her. She is curled up in the bathtub, using the scrap of fur as her blanket, which hisses at Katniss when she reaches in and half-wakes her sister to guide her into a proper bed. She curls up around Prim's small, warm body as they sink into the mattress, and her arms wrap tightly around her small chest and she closes her eyes and _wills_ away the bad.

Dawn isn't too far away, she knows. Except there is no way she will sleep. She can only see Delly, blind and sobbing and cawing and _clawing_ at her face. She doesn't sleep, and Gale shows concern by the time they are walking toward school together the next morning. She wants to tell him, wants to warn him so he will wrap his own arms around his brothers and sister and his mother and protect them from something that can't be fought with a bow and arrows – but it would be pointless. She would only make him frustrated and sleepless, and she would give a problem, that they neither understand, nor know enough about to actually assess, and that has absolutely no solution. She decides to wait and blames her tiredness on Buttercup, who had insisted on sharing the bed with Prim only; Gale buys it when Primrose suddenly applies herself to the lie, smiling and apologizing for her pet's behavior.

That disturbs Katniss a little, that she is lying.. so easily, and worse, Prim is lying for _her_.

She decides to let it go, for today. It helped, after all.

That aside, there are others things to worry about. Katniss hurries from Prim's class door to her first period, keen on talking to Madge before the teacher arrives, but she finds the day's second surprise awaiting her there. There is no Madge Undersee in the desk next to hers.

Katniss almost gives into the urge to turn to the Town students and ask after her. It would be peculiar and arise suspicion, and there is probably no answer worth hearing. She sits in her seat, eyes on her hands. There's the possibility Madge is running late, but Katniss has never beaten Madge to school before, let alone class.

They are well within roll, when Katniss decides that Madge will not be coming at all. She wonders if her father is refusing to let Madge to go to school, in fear she might catch something. Or perhaps, she's already caught something, the shot was faulty, and..

Paranoia is getting to her.

If it weren't for Madge, though, she would not be thinking these things. She wouldn't feel so.. _involved_ in the whole incident. She wouldn't know about any sort of shot. Delly's death would have remained unknown. It was Delly's death that triggered this, anyhow. All of it; the Peacekeepers, the Peeta problem, the possibility of Primrose getting sick, Mr. Undersee's strange actions and words and _implications_..

And she admits, she was hoping Madge would be here. She doesn't want to face Peeta alone. Where would his mind jump if she asked him over to her house.. to meet her mother? Yes. That would end badly, either him laughing or misunderstanding the meaning and being hurt when he realizes they only wanted to take some useful – and painful – memories of his and then send him on his way.

Not just that, either.

Katniss.. doesn't _know_ him.

For some reason talking is hard around him. Maybe it's because of all the things unsaid on her side of the situation, but that shouldn't matter. Not when this is so important. Or.. it seems important. This sickness has killed only a handful of people, after all. Is it possible she is taking this too seriously?

How can she? When people have blood flooding out of them from every point, how can she _not_ take it seriously? She just has to. Until it proves itself unharmful to her family, she will have to push and tug and ask questions – which is dangerous. Questions were always something she avoided ever since she lost a father that had once answered them.

Madge said Peeta was someone they could trust.

Madge wouldn't lie.

Peeta _can_ be trusted.

If he can tell her mother something more about this.. sickness that could help, then she will trust him.

It seems.. almost ridiculous, that she wouldn't, looking at it from some angles. He has never given her a reason not to; but he has not proven himself either, and that's what matters to Katniss, the proof. Yet, he was – _is_ – the boy with the bread. The person who gave her hope at her darkest hour and who had never asked for anything in return.. and there were those times she thought he'd wanted something more.. when she'd catch his eyes on her.. but no. He thinks she's _beautiful_. He said so. Awkwardly, but he's said it and she's never been called that; not unless it was Primrose. And this stumps Katniss because that isn't what she cares to hear, not really and she didn't expect it.. not from him and she is stumped by the fact that he wasn't watching her for the fact she owes him, waiting for her to pay him back in someway. It is hard – _too_ _hard_ – to wrap her head around the thought that he could have been merely.. admiring her from the distance.

_They've never even talked, _after all.

The day is long and quiet, because Madge is gone and she does not have any chance to see Gale, so she is friendless again; the way she likes it. She doesn't have to make up conversations and she sits in her seats in the backs of the classrooms, gazing out a window when one is available and pretending to listen to the teachers when there isn't.

At lunch, she sits, picking at her food; she'll eat it eventually, because it's all she has. For now, she pokes at it and listens. Though her eyes are trained on the motion of her hands, she is actually on the other side of the room, at the table some ways behind her back and to the right. She isn't one to eavesdrop, or to meddle or to care about what others say... yet...

"_Did you hear?" _Haile Giles asks. _"Mr. Conners was found dead in his house last night."_

"_Isn't that the owner of the floral shop?"_

"_Mhm," _Gins Pander confirms, the _hum_ a delicious vibration falling passed her lips. She doesn't care. Is interested, is keening to impress them with her knowledge, with the way his loss _unfazes_ her. _"I heard his daughter, too."_

"_But she's only five!"_

"_She is,"_ adds a solemn voice, Peeta's. "_Was_."

There is a sensible girl at the table, Misk Juniper. _"Do you think this is serious? A bug that's going around?_" Katniss tilts her head, and sees Misk's washed out eyes peering up at Peeta, nervous, _inquiring_, "_Do you think you could get sick?"_

Peeta shakes his head, a teasing smile toying at his lips, and he nudges her with a friendly elbow. "Wouldn't I be dead by now, if I had caught this thing?" And that seems to soothe everyone at his table.

Katniss isn't soothed.

She eats her food slowly, and watches the teenagers at Peeta's table slowly disperse. It shouldn't wait until the end of the day, because she risks him being otherwise occupied or worrying her family again. So she rises, bold, when she catches him walking toward the door and she shoves her empty lunch sack into her bag, before slinging it around her shoulders and walking after him.

He's with two other people; Bale Meres, and some other girl she _thinks_ is named Aven, but that could be wrong. Bale notices her approaching them first. Naturally, they would think she only wanted to get passed them and through the cafeteria doors first, but when Bale steps aside, holding it open – to the surprise of his companions – Katniss stops short of the threshold before she passes through.

She glances at Bale fleetingly, before turning to Peeta. "I need talk to you," she says, to the point. This isn't time to let the prejudice of the stare Aven is giving her bug her. She isn't going to rebuke from something as important as her sister's safety, _her whole families safety_, for two teenagers that were standing at his side.

Peeta is surprised; is _pleasantly_ surprised. "Okay," he says, no fight. He smiles at his friends and bids them a quick _see you in class, _and Katniss merely walks through the door, and down the hallway, expecting him to follow.

He does.

They reach a semi-empty portion of a hall, next to a water fountain. She reaches out behind her back with her arm, until her fingers touch the wall, balanced and she leans into them, her eyes sweeping the people around. No one. None that know them, or that care they're there, talking. No one in ear shot to turn them into a Peacekeeper.

Katniss' gaze lands back on Peeta. He's expectant, waiting for this talk. Not precisely impatient, but neither is he asking her to go soft on him – in the case that he might be thinking this has to do with their discussion from two weeks ago.

It doesn't. Part of her wishes it was. That would be more painstaking for her, but less paining for him.

Plus, she's already forgotten what he said, and is willing to forgive as long as he helps her.

But that's.. _hmm_. Is she allowed to ask him for help? She doesn't like asking for help. And from him, of all people? He's already helped her enough – _too much. _But this isn't about her. It's bigger than her and she can be a big person. Honestly, it's her mother, the healer, who wants Peeta – not _her_.

"My mother.." and she knows instantly that is _not_ the right way to begin this.

"Your mom..?" Peeta asks. He is being a good sport; he is not showing the amusement he is probably, most likely, _definitely_, feeling, and he is not letting himself assume anything until she finishes her sentence.

Katniss struggles to find the right phrasing.

"Are you busy after school?" No. "I mean.. can you stop by my house for a little while?" No, damn it. "Or, just, for a few minutes, it won't take long? My mother just needs to see you." No and _no_. "My mother is a healer..." Her eyes dance around the area, and Peeta narrows his eyes, turning his head to look around, too, trying, obviously, to see what she does. She wonders if he thinks he _does_. Her fingers fly from holding her against the wall to catch the end of her braid, curling around the hair, tugging lightly with each thought, every word that comes out not _right_. And then she finally says, while Peeta is still working together her motives, "She wants to talk to you about Delly.. and what happened.. and.."

Peeta isn't smiling; the mention of Delly took some brightness from his expression.

"Delly?" he asks. "Is someone else sick? Is your mom taking care of them?"

"No," Katniss says honestly. She is surprised at concern in his face; concern for someone in the Seam, that her mother might have the misfortune to treat, at that. "She just wants to know somethings.. about what.. this bug is." She knows it more than a bug. She would know even if Madge hadn't said so; but she uses the word the other girl from lunch used for familiarity.

Peeta stares at her; it unnerves her. The fingers twist the braid around her entire hand, tugging lightly, pricking the nerves at the base of her skull, as her teeth dig into her cheek; the two points of light pain, not enough to distract her from the uneasy shift of waves in her stomach. _Say something, idiot, _she thinks, not allowing herself to break eye contact.

"Okay," he says, finally.

"Okay?"

"I work at five, so I can't stay long. And I might not know much, but anything to help." There is a tug of his lips; an attempt at lightening the atmosphere. "I just hope she knows something that can help."

"Me too," Katniss replies, sure.

More her.

Peeta's smile widens, _warms. _"Do I just.. meet you at the end of class? Or.."

"Outside, where I stand and wait for my sister," Katniss says, and she is thinking about the warmth of his smile. She is thinking of the warm blush that crawled up his face, over the swollen, bruised side of his face, and he looked away, shyly, and she looked down and there was a dandelion, opening its petals to the sunshine, warm and bright and pale gold. "You remember?" she asks.

"The spot?"

_No, the dandelion._

"Yeah, the spot. Just next to the oak tree. I'll see you then."

"See you.. Katniss," but she is already halfway gone, too far away to hear.

She practically _collapses_ into her desk when she reaches her next class. She is late; which is not a new concept. The teacher marks something down – she really ought to figure out what it is they do that for, because they've been doing that for a couple of years now, and she's never bothered to care before. But she decides today is not that day.

The class passes slow. There is no one from the Seam in it, which always somehow makes it the most miserable one of the day. To make it worse, there isn't even a window, only the one door, that is always closed, making the room hot and stuffy. The teacher drones on about coal. Hyclin Mares passes a note around the front row, and Katniss watches it lazily move through almost everyone. She expects the boy in front of her to simply skip her and pass it along to Jenica Helix on her side, but the note is tossed on her desk all the same as the rest. She stares at it, untrusting, with narrowing eyes.

"Open it," the boy whispers over his shoulder, his blue eyes smiling at her.

Now she really doesn't want to. The stubborn half has an urge to crumple it up and throw it at the back of Hyclin's head. Almost does, too. Cautiously, since she knows there isn't anything in the note that would please her, she flips the folds and flattens the paper against the wood.

She expects something crude.

Something rude or snarky, or something to do with Peeta; because the moment the boy turned his head and smiled at her, her thoughts jumped to the boy with the bread. How can it not? Peeta's well within their crowd.. she doesn't belong.. has talked to him twice, he's said things..

The note is actually a drawing. She looks over the picture, then lifts her head to regard Hyclin. The girl is turned in her seat, smiling at Katniss. _Why? _Her own face wants to scowl; thinks it's the best thing to do in this foreign situation, but she merely frowns in confusion. The picture is of a dog, nothing special, a simple sketch, colored brown and spotted, and written beneath it in fine letters is; _free._

"_Interested?"_ Hyclin mouths. Katniss gives her head the curtest of shakes. Hyclin waves a hand to Jenica on the right, indicating; _then pass it on. _Katniss does. Jenica is no more interested than half the other class, passing it along easily.

She feels ridiculous for thinking it had to do with her. The boy in front of her deserves a kick in the calf for making her mistake his words for something else. Or maybe it was just her, jumping to conclusions, worrying about things that she really shouldn't. Either way, the scowl is permanent as she makes to go to her next class.

Katniss can't decide if she should be surprised or not that Peeta actually _greets_ her when she walks into her last class of the day – one that she shares with him, and once, too, Delly. He looks up as she enters the door and waves a few fingers and smiles and she doesn't know _what_ to do with herself. They aren't friends. _Doesn't he know that? _To her supreme effort she dips her chin, then she allows her eyes to slide away from him to the floor and she slips her way to the back of the room, keeping her head lowered, toward her toes, allowing her braid to fall against the left side of her jaw – if it were loose, she'd be hidden behind a curtain of hair.

This class, impossibly, passes slower than the last. Her eyes keep straying to the empty seat. It's hard to imagine that Delly's gone.. since she was only sitting in this room two weeks ago, at this exact time. She was already dying by then, wasn't she? Katniss wonders if she should be nicer, suddenly, to Peeta. He has, after all, agreed to come over and share this stuff with her mother, – for no other reason than that of helping others – and Katniss find herself lingering over the words Madge said and what she meant last night when she'd said he'd tell _her_, as if..

As if she were a special case.

Katniss slumps into her desk tired of the empty seat, of her thoughts, and she melts on top of her arms crossed over the wood and she rests her chin on her hands. She stares at the front of room, until she remembers there's a window available and she turns her head, _just so_, and her eyes trace up the branches of the oak and then land on the grass, raptured by a dandelion there, old and withered and its petals turned to white dusts.

She dreams she is at the lake. This is not her lake. Not the lake her father brought her to. This lake is crimson and thick and the deepest murkiest parts are black – congealed blood, sticking to her and pulling her ankles into the shallows. It drags her down, and she claws at the shore with her nails, desperate, _fighting_. The scarlet liquid sears her flesh and latches onto her as though tiny fingers, hooking into her form, _dragging_ her down. Katniss is fighting. Throwing her arms out and flailing and kicking her legs – but she has no legs. She _can't_ feel her legs. And someone is crying – no that's just her. She is crying and the tears start to burn, _sting, _as if treks of acid slipping across her cheeks and –

Someone pushes her shoulder.

She jerks, and her hands fly up and she shoves back, at the nearest body to hers; it is just an arm, connected to the hand that had touched her and jolted her from her nightmare. It is _just_ Abigale Biggles' arm. The girl looks at Katniss, and eyes her, seated across the isle, uncertainly, wearily, and even a smidgen _concerned_. Katniss looks quickly around the room and is relieved to find the atmosphere untouched, that no one but Abigale noticed her.. troubles and she turns back and means to lift her lips in some sort of appreciation, but Abigale is already doodling again and cares little for a thank you.

Inevitably, Katniss checks a certain head of blonde curls, to make sure, and sure enough he is not watching her; she is even more relieved, and sinks into her desk again, feeling groggy and disconnected. She presses her knuckles to her cheek and finds it unnaturally flushed and hot.

There is something wrong with her.

Nightmares are not uncommon. But these are different. Her usual nightmares are of dark tunnels and of heavy rubble and a high pitched canary cry, _harmonizing_ with the sound of her father's dying screams, as the mines collapse.

Not blood, or birds, or _burning_.

She calms herself by reasoning; _at least it wasn't of Delly._

By the time she is released Katniss is feeling sluggish. She trudges through the hallway, heading toward the oak tree and her bag is somehow _heavier_ on her shoulder than it was all day.

Gale is there with Rory already, and Primrose rushes up to her side when she is halfway across the yard. Somehow she is not looking forward to telling them about the extra passenger on their trip – and she has to, because as soon as they reach the spot, the Hawthornes prepare to turn, heading away..

"Wait," Katniss says. "We have to wait."

Gale turns back. "Why? Is something wrong?" He is suspicious; he has a right to be. Not at her, of course, but in general. The atmosphere has been off for two weeks. He knows she is hiding something from him. What, she does not know, there are three things; _does he think it's about the Peacekeepers or the sickness or.. does he think there is something going on between Peeta and her?_

She can't deal with that, answering his question. Doesn't want to. Gale shouldn't think of her that way, because she isn't going to have those kinds of relationships. But he is a boy, and he is Gale Hawthorne and he _hates_ Townies.

Her bag slips from her shoulder and she offer it to him, her eyes allowing all her exhaustion to show, for the first time in days and Gale does not hesitate to help her, taking the rucksack and hiking it effortlessly onto his own shoulder. There is surprise evident in him, but he hides it well enough in his willingness to comply. She smiles, dimly, and he is not placated, per se, but he is.. soothed, _reassured_, and it is not often that Katniss allows him to do things for her, so he will not object.

And she hopes that he will not object to their guest, because she has already spotted him in the yard. He smiles at her and is obviously coming their way, and is looking at _her_. Primrose greets him first, notices him in their orbit, and he smiles back at her sister.

His eyes dance to Katniss, then Gale, then Rory; they land back on hers.

Gale turns his head to regard Katniss.

She refuses to look at her best friend and turns away from them all. He's here. No more waiting.

"Okay, we can go now."

"_Him?"_ Gale says, barely audible, moving to keep pace at her side.

The three others fall behind; Peeta, and siblings. They are talking and Prim is laughing, and Katniss wonders what is being said. Katniss turns her head and addresses Prim. "Peeta's going to come over for awhile today, and I thought.. that you could go over to Hazelle's house and stay over there. Just until dinner, and then you can come home and I'll milk Lady with you. Okay?"

There is _curious_ in her eyes like Katniss has never seen. But she nods and agrees and looks to Rory and asks him if Posy will be up to playing. Peeta picks up his pace to walk on Katniss' other side, at some distant of two feet, at least. That leaves the three older, trudging ahead... in an awkward line, where Katniss twists a finger around the edge of her shirt, and she refuses to acknowledge either. She _does not see_, the other people around in the yard and beyond, throwing glances, muttering.

That is, until Gale abruptly picks up his pace, practically fast walking, and finds himself far ahead. He is brooding, for no other reason than something petty. She doesn't want to tell him about the sickness, the shot, to make sure he doesn't anguish himself in his worry – like her – but as she stares after him, upset, she knows she has to. Sometime. To at least explain Peeta to him.

Gale's hand holds her bag's shoulder strap as though to strangle it.

Katniss presses her lips together.

"Didn't tell your boyfriend I was coming, huh?"

"What?" Her head whips to the side; despite the fact that she'd silently promised herself she wouldn't look at him. The promise lost, her gaze traces him, and he is peering at her, sideways, hands in his coat's pockets, and he shrugs at her question. "Don't shrug at me," she snaps, quietly.

That gets his attention. Peeta's head perks up and his eyes _smile_ at her, as though the prospect that he baited her to snapping at him was amusing. "I just meant, you could have warned him, that I was going to be here. I don't want to get between you two." He gestures with his chin toward Gale and then tips his head at her.

Indignation flames in the pit of her stomach. Unbidden, the gossip that she knows that goes around about her and Gale, come to mind. How people say they are well known at the slag heap.

"There is nothing to get between," she says. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Peeta's smile widens. And it _bugs_ her again.

"What?" she hisses.

"Nothing. I'm just happy."

"Why?"

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

There is no reply. Katniss merely narrows her eyes at him.

"Are you two coming or _what_?" calls Gale from far ahead.

"Yes, we're coming," Katniss calls back, picking up pace and she half turns, directing the next words at the boy with the bread, "I didn't take you for someone to listen to gossip and rumors," and she doesn't give him time to justify his implication that her and Gale were a thing – a common thought by all rights, but when Peeta said it.. it _bugged_ her.


	3. Chapter Three

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. Hope you enjoy. Sorry for typos. Thanks for reading. Reviews are updates. As to those who think they know what disease, you probably don't. But there was a good guess! -Taryn(:

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Chapter Three

They reach the house without much talking. Gale had parted ways with the two little ones, while Katniss and Peeta continued on to Katniss' house together.

The whole time she clenches her jaw and works to loosen it while Peeta seems to put effort into silence.

All in all, by the time they reach the front door, Katniss is relieved.

Her mother is inside, waiting for them, moving about the kitchen. She looks up at the two when they enter the dusty, slightly cluttered house, and smiles thinly. "Have a seat at the table," she offers, after introducing herself and Peeta did the same.

Katniss moves toward the other side of the room, that is half-hidden and tucked away by a patchy coach and strung up curtains. From behind the coverage, she tosses down her school things onto her and her sister's bed and watches out the corner of her eye, through a crack of fabric, as Peeta does the same with his things, underneath the kitchen table, and taking a seat. He's more at ease than herself, which makes her envy his composure somewhat.

Most of this feels surreal to her. To have him at her house, to hear him as he compliments her mother on the smell of what she is cooking. Her mother doesn't seem to have any problem responding to him, though she does stumble some. Katniss figures she can't hide the entire time and reemerges, drawing a deep breath – she reminds herself this is her house, her element, he is only there to help her, and her mother, to help them understand, at the very least.

Peeta's fingers are tracing a dent on the table top. "How'd this happen?" he asks, curiously, when Katniss sits herself across from him.

A dull amusement touches her, beyond her layers of all business. "You don't want to know." He lifts his eyes and measures her gaze. Katniss allows a grimace to pass her expression. "We don't eat much at this table," she admits, as answer, "my mother uses it for healing."

Peeta nods, apprehensive about the dents and nicks of the table now. Her mother joins them at the table, sitting at Katniss' side, wiping her hands off on a cloth before setting it aside and regarding the ravished wood. "I think the dent you pointed out was from the time I'd amputated Mr. Jensen's arm." Mrs. Everdeen's face shows no dismay or the distaste Katniss' and Peeta's did.

"Unfortunate," he comments.

"It gave him his life, that's what matters," her mother replies.

Peeta looks at loss of how to reply.

"Maybe we should.. get along," Katniss encourages, mostly because she is certain she can't stand this for long. "He has to work tonight."

"Yes, of course." Mrs. Everdeen presses her lips together, and when they part again, she is no longer the awkward mother trying to sound normal, she is a healer. Katniss' shoulders sag. "Can you tell me anything about Delly? The manner of her death, what led to it, and afterward?"

She doesn't mention Madge and what she already knows. Which is good, Katniss figures, they don't want Peeta to grow upset at the fact that Madge was already there, in that exact seat, sharing with them what he'd confided in her with.

"Other than coughing, I know she had.. these headaches, and she'd get dizzy, the day before." His voice is carefully level, and his words seem to come easy, but there is a dent between his eyebrows, and he keeps swiping his palms against his thighs, _nervously_.

"And?" Mrs. Everdeen prompts.

"She had swollen lips." Katniss allows her eyes to fall away from observing him, feeling as though she were staring _too_ much. He is there to answer her mother's questions, after all – she is only listening and awaiting the healer's assessment. One of her hands finds the edge of the table and fiddles with a chip in the wood, her nails clicking. Peeta continues on to tell them the manner of Delly's death, a lot less graphic than Madge's account, but with all the right details; nothing new.

There is a solemn silence that follows his last words, of Delly's blindness, her screaming, and the image of her when the Peacekeepers came to take her away. _That's right, _Katniss thinks, lifting her head, _he talked to the Peacekeepers, too. _"What did the Peacekeepers say to you?" she asks."When they had you in custody."

"They asked questions. About Delly. They didn't tell me anything about what happened to her."

"What did they want to know?" her mother cut in.

"The same things. What happened, how it happened, what led up to."

Katniss frowns. Disappointment lay heavy on her. _How is she to help if she can't find anyone with answers? _

Peeta must catch her glower of regret – for asking him there in the first place, making him say the things they already know, risking the association, the possibility this may have given him some wrong indication about what he'd said to her two weeks ago – not to mention, the way she snapped at him before they reached the house.

Her frown deepens as she recalls the way he'd immediately assumed her and Gale together.

"Nothing more?" Mrs. Everdeen asks. Katniss realizes they'd been staring at each other across the table the entire time, and her eyes fly back down to her hand, picking at the wood.

His voice seems deliberative, once he does mange to answer the question. "They asked me if I touched the blood. They wanted to know if I had ever kissed her or if we shared food. Delly's brother had shared her milk with her at lunch the same day she died, and he died three days later, from the same thing. Her mother was this week." He draws in a long breath. "It's passes through touch, not the air."

Mrs. Everdeen seems to sigh. "That is good."

That _is_ good, Katniss supposes. It explains why no one from the Seam has gotten sick. Those kinds of contacts don't occur among the Town and the people of the Seam. The only mystery that remains is why it _started_ in Town in the first place, and how. Of which, she doesn't expect Peeta to know, yet..

She has this tugging at her mind.

An image – of _physical contact_. She remembers how Peeta was the first to rise when Delly fled the classroom, and what Madge told them, _something he left out_, –and maybe it wasn't left out as a deception, perhaps it was thoughtlessly forgotten, or spared for them – all the same, it niggled Katniss.

"And you didn't touch her?" Katniss found herself asking.

Peeta shook his head.

"At _all_?"

Peeta's eyebrows draw tight. "I–"

_Madge said you held Delly down when she tried to claw her eyes out, do you deny it?_

"Katniss," her mother cut in before the question turned from a thought to words.

But she is too _stubborn_ to let it go. "You have to tell us. You can't not tell us," she snaps, finding herself suddenly, very frustrated and upset. "You were talking to my little sister today. _Walking right next to her._ You're in our house. You can't be sick with this thing and act like your not, infecting people without them knowing. You have an obligation to tell _me_."

_Us. _Damn it. _Us, _she meant to say, but somehow it came out as _me._

The mistake is lost on them and her after a few moments. She's worked herself up, and she feels hurt, that Peeta could have put her whole family at risk, knowing there was a chance he would infect them – or even her. Primrose could be exposed merely if Peeta pricked his finger on a splinter and she has the misfortune of touching it later, somehow ending up sick–

"Yes," Peeta says, finally. "I touched the blood, but I washed it away. The Peacekeepers watched me the day after. They took my blood. They told me I wouldn't get sick." There is a light of offense in his eyes, buried beneath a slather of guilt and bewilderment, and a grim layer of surety. "I would be dead already. This thing takes three days at longest to kill someone."

She knows that. She knew that. Yet, she can't figure out why she grew upset, knowing that. So she gives a jerk of her head, that could have been a nod and she wraps the hands resting in her lap into fists.

Mrs. Everdeen had been staring at her daughter, blankly, but now she turns back to regard Peeta. She forces him to meet her calm, collected gaze. "Have you felt unwell at all since Delly's passing?"

"The Peacekeepers said I wouldn't get sick," says Peeta, confidently.

"Peacekeepers lie," her mother responds. "Don't be frightened to share. I'm a healer, and I'll treat you the same as any other human being that comes to my door unwell. Have you felt anything off since Delly's passing?"

Katniss peeks up at him from underneath her eyelashes.

Peeta stares at the table.

"Mr. Mellark?" Mrs. Everdeen prompts.

"Sore," he says, sighing, almost as though defeat. "My muscles, all over my body have been feeling sore and tight and they cramp whenever I do anything or lift anything."

"Did you do anything strenuous recently? To cause this?"

"No, it started randomly, the next day, after Delly.." he stops. "And my chest, it's tight."

"Tight?" Mrs. Everdeen is nodding, solemnly. "Is it hard to breathe?"

"Yes," says Peeta, quietly. "My heart races for no reason. Just from standing or lifting a book. Hurts."

Katniss feels an urge to cover her ears. She shouldn't, though. She listened to his and Madge's re-account on what happened to Delly without flinching or shuddering, and by all means, Delly's condition was far worse than soreness and tightness. It's _worse_ to hear, though. Something she doesn't want to hear. And it _must_ be because Delly is dead and Peeta isn't. There is something final and done with about Delly, that isn't true about Peeta. Live victims are simply worse, on principal. The tug on her mind, telling her to flee and go hunting and free her thoughts is similar to the same tug she feels when a person in need of healing stumbles into their house, and she can't watch without growing woozy.

The _same_ tug, she tells herself. And her nails dig into her palm, the sting distracting her from the urges.

"Would you mind.." her mother begins.

"No," Peeta says. "If you think.. that there is something.."

"It won't hurt to check." Mrs. Everdeen rises and goes to a cupboard in the kitchen, where the box of her medical supplies sits, worn and old, but still useful. When she returns she sits herself next to Peeta, and Katniss watches the examination, feeling _off_.

Mrs. Everdeen starts by taking his pulse at the wrist. She is frowning afterward. "I'd like to listen to your heart," her mother tells him, and he nods, calm, and obedient – but if Katniss knows enough of him to _notice_ things, she sees he is wound tightly underneath the surface. Mrs. Everdeen shows him the stethoscope and he removes his shirt in one swift movement, wincing afterward.

Katniss averts her face.

"Hmm," her mother says. Katniss allows her eyes to glue on the floor. She's seen plenty of examinations and check ups, simple ones, where both men and women undress, and more often then not she's glimpsed them completely bare, on that very table, burned or crippled or whipped. Peeta's minor adjustment of the amount of bare skin shouldn't perturb her. But it _does_.

"Are you nervous?" Mrs. Everdeen asks Peeta, winding the stethoscope and removing the ear pieces from her ears. She regards him with a faint twist of her lips. "Your heart is galloping."

Peeta lets out a wheezed sort of breath. Katniss allows herself a flicker of a glance – she doesn't make it to his face, but feels heat pool in her shoulder and neck, when her gaze lands on his chest, up the shoulders, and watches his adam's apple bob. Her eyes fly back to her fingernails, picking at the chip in the table.

"A little," admits Peeta.

"Tell me," says Mrs. Everdeen, "how did you touch the blood? And where was it? Near a cut?"

"There was no cut," he says. Mrs. Everdeen takes his arm and begins to prob and feel up the length of the muscles, all cold fingers and professional grasp. Peeta winces every time she adds pressure. "I got it on my hands, when I'd grabbed her wrists. Mr. Cartwright took them from me almost instantly and told me to go wash myself. I left, for two minutes, scrubbed it away and when I rushed back.."

"I see." Mrs. Everdeen lets his arm fall and she reaches for his leg, but Peeta flinches away.

Katniss lifts her head.

"I'm sorry."

Almost instantly, by the way he says that, she _knows_ something is wrong.

In flurry of few movements, Peeta reaches for his shirt to pull it back on, stoops to pick up his bag – she sees the way his eyes flare in pain, before he hides it behind a strained smile – and he turns to them, offering the tug of his lips in return for their bemused stares. "I'm sorry," he repeats, more steadily, "that I couldn't help you more than I did. Thank you," he directs at her mother, "it was nice to meet you, but I should go. I can't be late to my shift at the bakery."

"It's not even four," Katniss objects, as he reaches for the door. She rises from her seat. "I'll walk you–"

"No." Peeta glances over his shoulder, a flash of fear in his eyes, then shakes his head and pushes the door open. "No, thank you," he corrects himself. "I know the way, don't worry about me." He leaves without another word.

Katniss sinks back into her chair.

Moments later; "He's sick."

Her lips feel numb when they move. "He said he wasn't."

"He lied," her mother responds, coolly, putting away her supplies. "There's something wrong with that heart. I don't know what. But I give him a week, if not less, before it gives ou–"

"Are you saying he's sick with something _different_?"

"I'm saying whatever is wrong with him, it's got to do with his blood, all the same as everyone else."

Katniss feels a surge of bleakness draw on her. Soon, Peeta will die. It's awful to know, for some reason – something that is like a knife twisting in her belly. Guilt flits into her chest, remembering the way she attacked him, and snapped at him, and now he's going to die – and she's never said thank you for the bread.

After what seems like an hour, she gets to her feet.

Katniss goes about the house, putting on her father's hunting jacket and slipping her hunting knife into a boot. _For show_, she thinks, as she reaches for the game bag and pulls it onto her shoulder. To stall a bit longer, in hopes she doesn't run into Peeta on the path from the Seam to Town, she redoes her braid, twisting the tresses tight enough to the point of pain. By then the dinner is ready, but she doesn't feel hungry and she makes sure she tells her mother _to get Primrose_, before she exits the house.

Outside, the evening is cool and damp. Grass sways in the breeze, tugging at her legs, as she crosses the Meadow and finds a thick patch of bracken to hide her game bag beneath. She takes the long way back to the gravel, around the edge of the Meadow, until she is on pavement, heading into Town.

This path is a part of her and Gale's everyday trading route, so it's not hard to find her way to the mayor's back door and knock – waiting anxiously for an answer. She knocks twice more, before she hears something from inside. _Funny, how yesterday night it was Madge who came to her house with urgent knocks – _now it is Katniss, and it makes her feel sad, rather than mirthful.

Madge answers the door.

"My father won't let me go to school any longer," she says right off, assuming why Katniss was there.

"I guessed that." She falters suddenly. The reason she came in the first place is second guessed and her eyes stray to the side. "I came for another reason."

"Did you talk to Peeta?"

"I did, yeah."

"And?"

"And I need you to tell me where I can find those shots."

"Why?"

She draws in a breath, hardens herself and is _sure_.

"I mean to steal them."


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

"Gale?"

The boy lifts his head at her voice. Around them the world is a dim gray, just barely morning, and she watches as the fox he'd been aiming at flits from sight. Gale's face is set as he points his loaded bow at the ground and slowly allows the tension in his muscles to release. "Katniss?" he replies, evenly. "Did you find something wrong with the fox, then?"

"No," she murmured. Katniss trails her fingers over the bark of a tree next to her and shifts the bow around her shoulders. She allows her eyes to trace the path the fox had taken, momentarily, in remorse, but doesn't linger. If she doesn't say anything now.. then it'll be too late. It's taken all her working muscles to get her tongue to form his name and now that she has his attention, she can't let it slip away. "Will you promise me something?"

"Depends. What will I be promising?"

"Nothing hard.." Katniss trails off and meets his curious gaze. They still haven't talked about yesterday, about the boy from the bakery that went home with her. Nor has there been any significant exchange about the sickness they've heard about spreading through Town.. it.. Katniss straightens her shoulders. "You have to _promise_," she says. "That you will take care of my family.. if something ever happens to me."

Confusion enters Gale's gaze. "Nothing's going to happen to you, Catnip. If you're talking about the reaping.. that's months away. And we already made a deal for that. If one of us gets reaped, the other takes care of both families."

"I know that." Katniss draws in a frustrated breath. "But there are other things that can happen."

"Like what?"

"Just promise me."

Gale gives his head a miffed shake. "You're acting weird lately.."

"I need you to promise me this. If something happens, take care of Primrose, please. And.." she falters. She knows she shouldn't ask it, in regards of keeping her secrets _secret_, but it has to be asked. "I need you walk Primrose to school today, too. Back, too."

"You won't be there to do it?" he asks.

"No."

"And.. where will you be?" There is a careful bridge in his voice.

_With Madge, doing something beyond illegal. _"I'm helping."

"Helping?" Gale simply sounds as though he doesn't believe her. "Helping who?"

"You," she snaps. "Primrose. Posy. Vick. All our family, Gale. What else would I be doing? That's what I do. I protect our families. So don't look at me like I'm somehow dumping it all on you."

"I didn't–"

"You didn't have to say it, Gale. I know you."

"And I know you," he retorts easily, and takes a few steps closer. "Something is off. Is it that Peeta?"

Katniss' frustration peaks at the mention of Peeta, of all things. But she contains it quickly. She overlooks Gale, calmly, and clenches her jaw. "So what if it is? Don't you trust me? I told you I'm doing this for us. I'll be back tonight and I'll explain everything then."

"Why can't you explain it now?"

"Because if I tell you what I'm going to do, and I'm caught, then you'll be executed, too." She can't get mad. Gale has a right to be upset. If she were in his shoes, she can imagine the frustration and confusion that would result. If he'd done any of what she's done in the passed two weeks, she would want an explanation. Not vague promises and weak arguments. But she can't tell him. Stealing is punishable by death. If they go for her family once she's dead, and they find out they knew what she was up to, they would be punished for it. And she won't risk hurting them, when really, she only meant to possess the medicine that would spare their lives. Not even it if were to soothe Gale's upset.

Katniss reaches out a hand and takes his, squeezes it. "Promise me."

"I promise," Gale says, finally, after searching her face. "But you can't just say that, and not expect me to want to help. What are you up to?"

"Nothing that you can help with. There's already a plan.." Offense arises in his eyes, and she wonders if he thinks her plans are with Peeta. "I need you somewhere else, with Primrose, and covering for me at school and at home."

"I can do that." He is reluctant. "But I should come with you. If you'll be in danger, your hunting partner should be there, watching your back."

Her hand slips from his. "Gale," she says, in warning. "Don't follow me."

"Where are you going?"

"Somewhere not safe."

There is a silence, and Katniss spots a bird perched on a branch overhead. Silently, in a swift sweep of her hands and arms, she pulls the bow from her back, loads it and draws back. The bird falls away from them about five yards and she jogs to get it, only to stall with her hand half extended, when she realizes it's a crow. Her lips press together in distaste.

"Something wrong with that one, too?" Gale asks loudly.

_Yes, _she thinks, but picks it up anyway. "No."

"Here, I'll take it." She lets him and he devotes himself to the task of de-feathering it. Once he's finished they take their rounds on the snares. They find a hare and Katniss takes her turn of skinning, before shoving the meat into the game bag. It's well passed dawn now, and so Gale offers to take the game bag, and asks her is she will promise him something.

"Maybe," she says, uneasily.

Gale reaches out a hand and Katniss feel her stomach jump in panic. She watches with wide eyes as the fingers reach her face and caress her jaw. There is something unbearably tense inside her, conveying uncertainty, and _fear_, and unease, but she shoves it all away. This is just Gale. A simple action. She won't let this cause trouble – she can forgive this, just as she forgave Peeta his words.

Only, Gale does this, _and_ has words, to cause her to grow even more unsettled.

"Come home," Gale murmurs. His fingers slide along her neck, then catch her braid and twists the strands at the end around his fingers. "To me." He forces her eyes to meet his. "Promise."

"I'll come home," Katniss manages eventually. "To all of you. I'll have something for you."

Gale is frowning. She knows that's not what he wanted her to promise. He wanted her to promise something _else_, something he knows she won't. Which frustrates her for a whole other reason; something that is vaguely tied with the bugged feeling Peeta gave her when he implied Gale and her had something together. They were best friends. He is hers and she is his, but they aren't _like that_. No one will ever be like that with her, she doesn't want and can't afford to have it.. even if eventually people think it will be her returning home to Gale.

At the end of the day, she'll return home, but just as much for Primrose, as for Gale.

"I'll have something _important_," she continues to say. "But you have to cover for me."

Gale retracts his hand and switches shoulders with the game bags. "Alright, then. Do what you have to do."

So she does.


	5. Chapter Five

A/N: Sorry this took so long! I really am and I hope this chapter makes up for it. Maybe. Thank you to everyone reading this story! Reviews are updates. -Taryn

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Chapter Five

Madge and Katniss are not quite sure what they are getting themselves into. Getting into the Justice Building wasn't the hard part, but they are sure (beyond sure) there is a camera trained on them, watching them, boring holes into the scarfs that are hiked up over their mouths and noses. Someone will raise an alarm soon, if they haven't already, and this makes them feel hurried and sloppy and paranoid.

Katniss is painfully aware of the fact that the scarfs are made of _silk _and the hats are too _pretty_. Who else in the district could own such fanciful, girlish stuff, other than the mayor's daughter? But they have no other choice. They could have snuck into the Justice Building wearing nothing, coming in without coverage and as themselves. (It is selfish to know and think, but Katniss thinks she's safe. Madge isn't. Madge will be known, but she will not be. At least, until questions are asked and everyone speaks about the Seam girl that sits with Madge during school lunch.)

Madge insists there are no cameras.

Katniss doesn't trust that to be true.

The rooms they try on their way are empty. "I thought you said it might be on the main floor in the storage hall," Katniss hisses, voice muffled by the scarf. She tries to be quiet, aware of the distant voices and footsteps. Each time someone nears, she twitches a hand toward the knife tucked in her boot. (The action is moot. If they are caught, she does not attempt to believe she will slash and cut her way through. It is just a hunting instinct, to want to pull out a weapon against predators. The building makes her uneasy, so eerily big and concrete and she feels hopelessly lost in the wide hallways, even though Madge knows exactly where they are.)

"I said might," Madge replies. "The papers I found didn't say _where_, only that the shots were _stored_."

They try another door, this time the room is full of dusty decks and tables and chairs stacked on top of each other. Nothing important. "Are you sure this is the right side of the building?" Katniss asks. "I mean, everything here is useless. Wouldn't the door be locked? Shouldn't it be guarded?"

"That would draw attention." A pause, as Madge turns in a full circle and observes each door around them. "The only other place.." Madge starts, trailing off.

"Where?"

"I'm not sure." Madge brushes her blonde bangs back beneath her lilac cap and readjusts her scarf, nervously, uncertainly. "I.. the only other place I can think of.. is a floor beneath us, and I don't know anything down there. Only the morgue."

"You think the shots will be there? With the dead?"

"I think they would keep the shots nearest to the infected, wouldn't they?"

Katniss doesn't know. "Look, the longer we're here, the higher the chance we'll be caught. Just take me where ever you think." There is a whole lot she's putting on Madge, by bringing her along, asking her for help, (the lives of her family) and she watches the flare of panic in Madge's eyes. "I trust you," Katniss insists, hoping to help. "Just think."

"We try the morgue.. then we.." Madge sighs. "There will be files there, we look in those."

"Right."

It doesn't take long for Madge to find the stairwell that leads them to the basement floor. There are the elevators, of course, but Madge is sure they will be caught on those. There are guards in those. In the stairwell, there isn't and they pause at the door. Madge peers into the hall for a few minutes, surveying the way. A chorus of voices can be heard arguing not too far away. "I know one of those voices," Madge whispers, forehead creased. "But otherwise.."

"Do you know which way to the morgue?" Katniss asks.

"Yes. To the left, away from the voices. Follow me."

Katniss shudders the farther they walk into the concrete halls the more the cold of the underground chills her. She is overly aware of the Justice Building looming above her. Floor upon floor of heavy material over her head and she feels claustrophobia sinking into her sides. She fights off the urge, and it is forgotten in a heartbeat when Madge fiddles with a door and pulls Katniss in by an arm.

Inside, the room is dark, reeking of stale death.

"I'll find the light," Madge whispers, hands gliding blindly over the wall.

Katniss nods, absently, moving into the room. She puts a hand out on instinct, fingers reaching for something to grasp. Each step is a test, and she feels as though the shadows are throwing themselves at her face. A metal table is ten paces from the door. Her shins discover this first. Katniss' hand comes down, slides along the table's corner.. then freezes when her fingers come in contact with silky strands that vaguely remind her of hair.

The lights flare to life. Both girls squint. After a few blinks – "Fuck," Katniss snarls and snatches her hand back. She takes a step or two away from the padded table. The body there is of a woman she does not know; she is near her mother's age, blonde and once beautiful. Madge gags at the sight of the carcass and moves away toward the office-side of the room.

"The files should be in here." A line of filing cabinets make up the east wall, behind a line of tables and a large desk. After only a few tugs, Madge concludes them all to be locked. "Worth a try," she said, sighing. "I'll try the desk."

Katniss hums her reply, prying her eyes from the dead woman, feeling sick to her stomach. The north wall is made up of metal storage lockers. Each section cut into twelve by five square openings. She knows, but asks anyway. "Do they keep bodies in there?"

"Yes. They're freezers, to keep the bodies from decomposing." Madge allows her eyes to stray to the woman in the middle of the room, pale and lifeless, stripped naked. "She has been embalmed so she won't rot as easy. We should hurry, though. Someone might come back to deal with her.."

Katniss does not want to know what 'deal with her' entitles. Instead, she picks up one of the little white tags hanging from the handles of the metal squares. It reads a name and date. Suddenly, she is moving from one note to the next, until she comes across _Delly Cartwright. _

"Madge, come here," Katniss murmurs. "Read this."

Madge comes and pales at the name. "You can't want to.." she starts.

Katniss is staring at the handle. "It can't hurt."

"It could."

And it turns out, that it does, because there is no body there when Katniss hefts it open. An icy, rank air swells in the room around the girls as they stare at the empty metal slab. Madge is the one to slam it shut. "They must have burned her," Madge says, distractedly. She turns away, green in the face, and steadies herself by surveying the room. "The desk is locked,."

"You broke the lock on the door, why not the desk?"

"They're the unbreakable kind. The kind that when you break them, it means no one will ever be able to open them again. Key or not." Madge glances side-long at Katniss. "Where next?"

_Where would they store the shots? _Katniss asks herself this over and over again.

In the end, after rummaging the room for keys or notes, they decide it would be much safe to come up with another plan outside of the morgue. Madge takes several minutes to cover up the mess of the lock on the door and Katniss paces around the hall, peering around corners, covering the blonde's back. Katniss leans into one of the walls, eyes trained on the corner, when Madge murmurs, "You never told me what Peeta said."

"Nothing important." Katniss shrugs; she doesn't turn to look at Madge. "The same as you, a small amount more."

They've discussed _stealing_ the shots, of course. Not the reason Katniss chose to. "Is he sick?"

"Peacekeepers say that he won't be." _Peeta believed that, _Katniss thinks, drawing a breath. But she remembers her mother's words. She sees Peeta fleeing the house, flinching away from her mother's touch, coloring in the face.. his nervous heartbeat. A hot and bothered feeling rises in her chest and face. She feels even more anxious to get out of here and find those damned shots. "Let's try the doctor's office after this, okay?"

"We can try." Madge seems uncertain. "That place is locked up tight. He's a _Capitol_ doctor, that only sometimes visits the Justice Building. No one here can afford him, except my father.. and that's only when my mother is in desperate need."

"Then we try," Katniss says. Forces Madge to hold her stare. "We have to try." _For Primrose._

"Anything," Madge agrees.

Katniss follows her from the hall and takes the stairs one at a time. Each move a tighter minute of time. The Justice Building isn't busy at this hour, but soon enough it will be crawling with officials and two teenage girls won't be missed. She doesn't want to urge Madge too much... It's not as though they really know what they're doing or where to look..

The moment they reach the main floor, Madge passes through the door and stalls so fast Katniss runs flat into her back. "Hey, you two!" Footsteps from the right reveal a Peacekeeper who turned his head at the sight of the stairwell door opening. Katniss breaks into a run. Expects Madge to be beside her. But the girl isn't.

The Peacekeeper has Madge by the elbow, tugging her ungraciously backward. Madge shakes her head at Katniss. "Go," she says, waving her free hand. "I'll be fine."

The Peacekeeper looks from Madge to Katniss, and sneers. "You brats aren't supposed to be in here."

Katniss doesn't wait for any other permission to leave. She goes from one hall to the next. There is no hope in finding the doctor's office. One hall is more confusing than the last. By heading deafly along the line of windows she finds herself to the front end of the Justice Building. Already the lobby she stumbles through is full of people. With the bodies blocking her from the view of Peacekeepers standing in their places, Katniss slips out the front door. She rips the scarf and hat from her head and throws them into the nearest bush, telling herself she'll come back for them later to return them to Madge.

Outside, she can breathe again. The day is going to be warm, she can tell by the dry breeze, and she convinces herself that Madge will be fine. Scolded and grounded, possibly, but the most they can do to her is return her to her father. They wouldn't whip the mayor's daughter for _trespassing_. Madge will come up with an excuse. A good one. Tell her father that she only wanted to see Delly one last time. They'll believe her. That's what Madge is far better at doing than Katniss, _lying_.

But Katniss still doesn't have the shots. The storage hall was useless. Morgue was a waste of time and she lost Madge's help to it. Doctor's office might have been a good place to check; then she has to back paddle and she can't get into there without Madge. _Where else would they store the shots?_

Predictably, they'll be important and expensive. They are, after all, Capitol made.

Katniss stills.

_Capitol made._

They are made in the Capitol. The shots come from the Capitol. Trains deliver them to District 12.

On the other side of town, the train tracks run. Katniss is cautious of the scarce Peacekeepers in the streets. She is supposed to be in school. Others don't give her a second glance, but she is sure Peacekeepers will not hesitate to send her back to her classes and lessons. Later, the information will go around that Katniss Everdeen wasn't at school, was sighted in town, and the mayor will know it was her with Madge in the Justice Building. (Assuming, of course, the cameras don't already give that away.) For now, that doesn't really matter. The plan of her and Madge's was feeble at best, since they were going off of snippets of words the latter had glimpsed on papers across her father's desk. Moments ago, Katniss had been sure they were in the Justice Building.

Now.

Three Peacekeepers stand guard around a stationary train. It strikes Katniss as odd, and telltale to the goods within there, since she never comes around this place, and she's never seen a train sit on the tracks within District 12 for more than a night to unload. By the water stains along the windows, the silvery metal surfaces, she knows the train sat there for yesterday afternoon's rainfall. (Katniss' stomach lurches, because the rain makes her think of Gale, and they had hunted together, at dawn, and he smelt of wet dirt.)

_For Gale. _

From where she is, tucked to the side of the nearest building, Katniss can see no clear way into the train. There are at least forty carts. All of them with tinted windows (if not any). Madge might of known just how to tackle this, but she's no longer there. Katniss is working alone. Part of her likes it much better. Another wishes to have someone watching her back.

Two of the Peacekeepers look bored and slack. They pick at their nails and lean into the train. The third is worse; almost asleep, basking in sun of the morning. Katniss will go from his side. She thinks she can slip underneath the train, hug the metal rungs of the track and find someway inside the compartments from there.

She sinks to her haunches, sliding along the concrete and through the gravel. No one notices her, until she is in the open and she feels glaringly vulnerable. One side glance and they see her. If the sleeping guard jerks awake, she will be forced to take off. Escape won't be hard, but if she alerts them to someone prowling around, they'll no longer be bored and lazy. Her chances of returning will be low if she messes this up.

Katniss convinces herself she isn't technically doing anything illegal or wrong until she has made it inside the train. She won't do anything desperate until then. For now, she can be strong and stubborn about her innocence. This gives her the courage to make the crossing and she slips easily underneath the train.

Bad happenings fill her mind as she elbows and shimmies her way over the tracks, closer to the back of the train and further from the guards. The train might move, and these things go hundreds of miles fast, in seconds. One finger or even her head, turned too much or lifted too high, could come clean off. Katniss shrinks away from the hovering metal and crawls as fast as she dares.

Underneath the fourth compartment from the last, Katniss rolls out from underneath the train, onto the opposite side of the Peacekeepers. There are no guards along this side. She sees no doors, except for the ones that slide open on the backs and fronts of the crates. To do this she has to step between two compartments and risk being seen.

Flattening herself against the side of the train, she inches toward the space between two compartments. The nearest Peacekeepers is leaning against the caboose. If she has to struggle with the door, he will hear. Katniss steps up onto the shiny ledge hanging from the back of the cart, is aware that there is a foot of distance between that ledge to the next one, and she slips her fingers silently into the handle of the door. There is a small square of glass in the center of the opening and she sees her reflection in it, darkly outlined, the sun hanging behind her.

How does she look so tired?

Are those really dark circles around her eyes?

The door slides open as muscles moving over bone.

Katniss closes it behind her back and listens for others inside the compartment. There are none, but the place is clearly decorated for human inhabitants; silver and blue, drinks and seats everywhere. She has never been anywhere so extravagant. She doesn't want to touch anything as she ghosts by, cautious.

(She is overly aware, the taste of danger in her mouth, that she is doing something illegal, now.)

At the end there is another door to the outside, and she opens it, a whisper of noise. Katniss holds her breath when she moves from one ledge to the next, opens the next door and slips back inside. The air is cooler and sweeter inside these compartments. She finds that the closer she gets to the front, the fancier the surroundings get. Yet, still, there is no one aboard this train. Certainly, it's not a luggage train, this is a passenger train. So where are the people?

Still, when she's inside, she checks each cupboard and side room and box. There is no food in the fridges, no silverware in the draws, the alcohol glasses are empty and the sinks do not run. Everything is untouched. Cushions are stiff and cold, covered in a fine, nose-wrinkling layer of dust. Neatly prepared bedrooms are eerily unslept in. The one time she dares to flick on a light, the bulbs buzz, as though they have not been used in years.

Through the tinted windows, Katniss can see out and no one can see in. It gives her a sense of safety, if nothing else. Watching the Peacekeepers, she moves only when she knows she won't be seen. More and more, the farther she goes, she begins to think this was not a good idea and the shots won't be here.

It is in the thirty-first compartment she is searching through that something _creaks_. Katniss freezes instantly, throat tightening. On instinct, she's searching for hiding spots, while still watching the doors down the length of the corridor. One of the doorknobs flickers, weakly. She panics, turns tail, slides open the door she has just passed through and goes outside. She sinks against the metal, underneath the window and clutches her arms to her chest, waiting. Inside, she hears footsteps, booted, nearing. Scrambling, rather than in any graceful act, she steps from the ledge and throws herself underneath the train once more.

The door opens, silently, the metal clanking underneath heavy footsteps. "Hello? Is someone there?"

_No, _she thinks. _Go back inside._

One of the Peacekeepers nearby hears the man's voice. "Is something off?" asks the man who Katniss has dubbed Guard Two. "Are you in need of something?"

"No..." A pause. "I thought I heard something. I must have imagined it."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll be back to my work. Keep to your own." The compartment is closed once more.

Katniss waits until Guard Two has paced away and joined Guard One before she breathes again. Careful not to kick rocks, she moves over the rungs, passing the occupied compartment toward the front. She tries to puzzle out who that man could have been. He works _in_ the train? The most obvious answer would be that he's the captain. Possibly. Or.. not. Does it matter? What matters is that she know there is at least one person on the train and she has to be more cautious the closer to the front she gets, in case there are more.

_Does that mean I should expect the shots to be on here, more or less, because of this?_

Five down from the compartment with the man in it she dares to test another door. This time she pauses on the inside, leaning into the door, hand ready to pull it open and to throw herself underneath the vessel if necessary. There is no immediate sound or signs of others. Minutes later, she decides this section of train is empty and she moves down the long, thin hall before her.

There are eight doors, four on each side. This was true for about ten or so compartments she'd been through previously. Other ones had been living set ups, dining areas, television rooms, and the likes. If there is a certain order of types of compartments it is lost on Katniss. All she knows is that on the fifth door she tries the handle is locked.

Katniss fumbles with it, rattling the metal. She's not much of a lock pick. At all. She hunts. She doesn't steal. Madge knew how to break a handful of locks in the Justice Building, which strikes her as curious (she doesn't linger on it, it is no concern of hers, and certainly doesn't matter) but she wishes Madge were with her now, more than ever, as she feels an intense urge to kick the edge of the door to solve the problem.

Painstakingly, she has to pass up the locked door and whatever is inside it. There is no other choice.

On the next piece of train, the compartments are purely empty. Nothing. No furniture or windows or even flooring. Cold metal boxes around Katniss from the locked-door compartment and on. Doesn't matter much anyway. She is nearing the front of the the entire train and once she's out of compartments to check, she has no choice but to go home or try to find Madge once more. On a whim, she decides she'll check one more then turn back.

Except that 'one more' is locked from the outside. Katniss expects the door to open as though greased, but it doesn't, and her hand slips from the handle and her elbow cracks against the metal. A burning ache spreads up her forearm. Guard One's footsteps are crunching in the gravel. "What was that?" he shouts.

Guard Two hurries to the front of the train.

Katniss finds her hiding place, cradles her funny bone, and watches the pairs of feet move around the area. They check out four of the nearest compartments, jumping from one side of the train to the others, not once looking beneath.

"Must of been a bird," says Guard Two. "Stupid things."

"Probably."

_This has to be where the shots are, _Katniss thinks, rolling onto her back and sagging into the track, her eyes trained on the hulking metal box above her. "But how do I get inside?" she whispers to herself.

Slowly, her elbow stops panging. Guard One is pacing back and forth right next to her and she can't do anything while he's there. So she lays, thinking, waiting. Her thoughts go to Gale, this morning, and she thinks of why she is doing this. _For Prim. _For all her family. Once she gets the shots she stuffs just enough in her pockets, makes sure it does not look like she sacked the whole place (it is better that people are not out hunting for a thief) and then she runs to the Meadow. There, she gets her game bag where it is stashed, puts the shots in there and waits out in the woods until school is out.

She smiles, on the inside, because if all goes well, Gale won't have to walk Prim home. Katniss gets to the tree and surprises them there and tells Gale to bring his family over and then she can make sure each of them gets a shot. They'll be safe then. Safe from whatever it is spreading through Town.

The thought is nice and relieving – but false. They aren't safe yet. The most exhausting part of what she has to do isn't even over and she can't relax _now_. Noon is upon them and the Peacekeepers are changing shifts. (A thought that upsets her, if only a little, because she doesn't know where these guards like to pace and if they are more likely to lean up against cart thirty or five.)

Four footsteps near the train, relieve the three Peacekeepers already there, and three of the four take stance at various places along the train's length. The fourth walks toward the middle of the train and enters a compartment. She hears voices, muffled in the distance (but it is so quite and stuffy outside today, she can pick it up), and Katniss knows that the fourth person joined the man she'd almost encountered before.

The new Peacekeepers are talkative. Two she suspects are friends, by the way they stick together, and the third sits heavily on the ledge of the engine compartment (the very first crate). Katniss is underneath the fourth to the front. The friends wander away. She only worries about the one left.

By then she's come to conclusion there is only one way inside the compartment. Break the window on the door. From there, she reaches in and pulls it open from the inside. If the doesn't work? She hefts herself through the square, reckless to the glass. Because she _has_ to get those shots.

First, though, how to break the window?

Katniss ruffles through the gravel, looking for any decent sized rocks. None are near heavy enough. There is a loose nail punched into one of the rungs of the train track. She fiddles with it; the thing is no normal nail for building, but heavy-duty and thicker than her curled fingers. Despite her greatest efforts, the thing won't come out. It is in there tight, though loose, and she suspects these Capitol made tracks aren't meant (_allowed_) to come apart.

She knows Peacekeepers keep clubs on their belts. Does she risk pickpocketing the one sitting on the ledge of the first compartment? She could, she supposes. She moves quietly enough, her hands can be gentle, but it all depends on the level of alertness of the man. If he catches her then she's accused of attempting to steal from a Peacekeeper. That's not worth the death penalty. Katniss can only image Gale's face when they tell him she died for a club.

Stumped, Katniss pulls herself out from underneath the train, crouches and moves to peer up at the door. The glass is tinted, but she's seen them from the other side and they aren't _that_ thick. Today, she had decided to wear one of her older shirts, patched and re-sewn multiple times over. (If she showed up at the Justice Building in her father's hunting jacket, that would have been her number one mistake.) Experimentally, Katniss wraps her hands into the fabric, flexes her fingers, and then (after a small check on the Peacekeeper's locations) she pulls herself onto the ledge.

The shatter of the glass is _too loud_ to her. Her hand is screaming similarly, in its discomfort. Scarlet riots from the tears on her shirt and skin, blossoming outward and she fumbles, her fingers sticky and slick, with the inside handle of the door. Katniss does not blink or breathe, until she had pulled it open and stepped inside (immensely relieved she will not have to claw her way through that small window, cutting up her stomach and legs in the process.)

Inside, there are no boxes in neat rows full of life saving medicines as Katniss imagined.

No. There is nothing near so miraculous.

A gagging stench wafts into her face and her undamaged hand clamps over her mouth and nose. Around her are zippered black bags, piled ungraciously over each other. Some slump awkwardly against the walls, others are tumbled around, messy, rolled from travel. A pale flung out child's arm has fallen loose from a bag with a burst zipper. The fingers are open, as if in appeal toward Katniss, beckoning her forward.

In the pile nearest to her, the black bags are not closed, _fresh. _And no. They didn't burn Delly. She's right there, among the others. There are dried and crusted drops of blood on her cheeks, mingling in her pale eyelashes laying against prominent and girlish cheekbones. (A face Katniss had once considered smiled _too_ much.) The blonde hair is tangled, matted in red, pooling to the side, brushing the shoulder of the corpse on her left. An infant; barely large enough for a purse.

Too shocked to make sense of what she's seeing, Katniss staggers back, falls right off the ledge and smacks her head on the metal ledge opposite of the compartment full of the dead infected. Pain spreads outward from the base of her skull and she dizzily pulls herself to her feet, stumbles to the side and has the good sense to crawl underneath the train when she collapses onto her hands and knees.

Evidently, the Peacekeepers didn't hear the breaking glass. Not at all. The one nearest to her is snoring and the best friends are talking together loudly almost forty compartments away. She should rise and close the door, but Katniss doesn't trust herself to stand. All she can do is awkwardly crawl further and further away and to the back of the train. Away from what she has just witnessed.

She's careful not to leave any blood behind. No physical evidence. The shirt prevented the blood from touching the glass shards and she re-wraps the fist clumsily into the fabric as she leans her forehead and shoulder into the metal rungs. For one estranging moment, she lays awkwardly, right there, head splitting. Experimentally, Katniss touches her sclap beneath her hair and it comes away red. Not too much. More a scrap than anything internal. Hopefully. She can't decide if the burning nausea in her gut is her breakfast wanting to come back up due to the sight of the corpses or the effects of a concussion.

_Why would they put them in there like that? _It's hardly sanitary. Katniss gets the queasy feeling that the two other compartments in front of that one are similarly filled. _They can't all be from District Twelve._

She closes her eyes and wonders if this train has sat in other districts, anytime recent.

Once the world doesn't tilt Katniss moves swiftly to crawl all the way to the back of the train. It's the safest place to resurface and then make a run for Town and she isn't sure where after that, but the Meadow sounds like a good place to collect her bearings. Her mother will need to fix up her hand, though, and she isn't sure what story she needs to make up. At the moment what is most important is escape.

The friendly Peacekeepers are ignorant of Katniss. She slinks from the back of the train and passes the gravel onto concrete once more and dives between the nearest buildings. As she walks she straightens herself out. She arranges her braid to cover the blood that trickles warmly down the back of her neck, wrapping her hand so tightly in the shirt over her stomach that no red is visible. Only looks as if Katniss is fisting her shirt tightly, revealing far too much of her skin from the waistband of her pants to her ribcage.

_At least Madge didn't see that, _she thinks, to soothe herself.

Deep breaths. Eyes focused on the path to the Seam. Don't look around. Don't blink too much. And most importantly, no running. There is the usual hustle of people in Town at this hour and she sticks to the emptier sides of the streets until there is the gravel, and _there_, the Meadow. Katniss falls to her knees the instant she is at least halfway across the Meadow, rolls onto her back, and lays there.

Clouds play in the blue sky overhead, the sun bright and blinding. She breathes and breathes. The pain in her head is clearing, but dully aches with each thump of her heart. Pulses of heat run in the slices on her hand and she closes her eyes, bright, dancing colors amidst the black. Like fireworks from the Capitol.

_Like the shots from the Capitol, _she thinks, sighing. _Where are they? _Not here after all? But they have to be. Madge read... something... and they were _stored_. Such a weak argument, that is. The officials were given shots.. logically, there might be extras. Has to be. Katniss won't give up. Those bodies.. those people.. the sight of that if anything has strengthened her resolve as much as her fear for what is _spreading_.

The sickness is no longer imaginary. It's not an almost threat. This is happening. This is _real_.

She thinks of what Madge has told her. She thinks of the train, so empty, except for that man and the infected. How the train was being _guarded_. The careless way those body bags were tossed into there. Do they fear to touch them? Will that train be blown up in some barren place once they finish collecting the bodies?_ Should I be more worried about them finding the broken window and the wide open door... or about the fact that I stood there for a few seconds, so close?_

But then she remembers Peeta. _It's not airborne._

_Caw._

Katniss stiffens, eyes flying open.

Up in the sky there is a crow wheeling above the Meadow. A black imperfection against the blue. _Caw, caw. _She stares at it, tracks it around and around. Dizzy, she knows she should get up, but her body is exhausted. _She_ is exhausted. The last few nights have been spent fretful and hugging Primrose close. When she does sleep, she dreams. Right now, her eyes are heavy and she doesn't think closing them for a moment will hurt. Open them after she gets too comfortable. Close them for two heartbeats. Open for a minute. Close them for two. Open. Close. Open. Close...

… snap them open, when two hands are shaking her.

The sun is hours into the afternoon, shifted right in her face when Katniss jerks upright. Streams of light cause her to twist away and cover her eyes. Wet smears her cheek and she pulls her hand back, squinting at it, and remembers that she cut it up, a little too late. There is a pounding at the back of her head, resounding her heart in the temples, that is _very_ apparent.

"Katniss?"

_Odds_. "Posy?"

"Why are you sleeping out here?"

Katniss ignores the question. "What are you doing here?"

"Playing," the little Hawthorne informs her.

"All by yourself?" Katniss works to cover the bloody hand and shirt, mixing the two like before. The blood has dried in her hair, crusted down her neck, making it possible to blend in. She swipes haphazardly at the marks she left on her face. "That's not safe."

"I'm big enough," Posy insists indignantly. Then her eyes become moons. "Is that blood?"

"Yeah. I was hunting. Just animal blood." The lie comes awkwardly. But it's good enough for Posy.. she'll need to practice if she wants to tell the same thing to Gale and her mother. At least, if she wants them to believe her.

"Let's go home," Katniss decides, getting to her feet. Posy races on ahead, enthusiastic. When Katniss finally reaches beyond the Meadow, the little girl has paused at the edge, waiting with her hands tucked behind her back. She is peering suspiciously up at Katniss.

"Where's your game bag, if you were hunting?" Posy asks.

"Right," Katniss says and turns her head sleepily. She rubs at a pounding temple. "I left it back there, before I fell asleep. I'll go back for it. You go on ahead and tell them not to worry. I'll be home soon."

Posy nods, grins, and disappears.

Katniss slips the hand down to the sore spot at the joint of her shoulder and neck as she crosses the Meadow. She stoops to get the game bag where she had told Gale to stash it once he traded the food that morning after they separated. Standing back up hurts more than it should. The weight of the completely empty bag sinks disappointment in her. _I promised Gale I would come home with something. _Home doesn't sound appealing, despite all her injures that need healing.. and she decides.. she can stall.. if only for a moment.. by checking on Madge.

It wouldn't be a mistake to show up there, would it? No. Not if she has her game bag and pretends she's out on a trading route. Posy will tell them not to worry (she will mention the blood from hunting, and they will believe Posy, because she thinks it's the truth, and they will assume she went to trade). By the angle of the sun Katniss guesses it has to be around five. Two hours isn't that late. Katniss arranges the game bag to sling over her front, covering the blood stains.

Eventually she convinces herself that she _has_ to check of Madge. It's what a good friend would do. Katniss _had_ left her behind when they were caught (doesn't matter that Madge _told_ her to run on ahead). Anyone would go back to check on their partners in crime. But the walk feels so much longer than usual, when she has such an awful headache, and it's clumsy to knock on the door with her left hand. The person who answers the door isn't anyone Katniss knows. "Did you need something?" the plump woman demands.

"Madge," is Katniss' tight-lipped reply.

The woman eyes Katniss, shrugs, and motions her inside. That stunts Katniss. She's never been _inside_. Not even when they were planning today together. Madge had stepped out and they'd whispered and.. she steps in anyway. There's no reason to ignite suspicion. The room is a kitchen. It's not overly large, but modest and clean enough that Katniss is overly aware of the mud on her boots. "Madge's room is three down from here," the woman tells her and Katniss is bemused for a moment, before she straightens and walks down the hall.

She almost knocks of the bedroom door, but decides not to.

Inside, Madge sits in the middle of her bed. She doesn't stir at the sound of the door opening. "I'll eat on my own–" Madge starts to say, turning slowly, then pauses at the sight of Katniss. "Oh."

"I was let in." Katniss feels awkward for a moment in the white and yellow room. Everything is nice and neat and sturdy, the carpet cream – she moves to kick off her boots, but Madge shakes her head.

"Leave them on, doesn't matter. I'll clean that up later." Then she looks up and meets Katniss' gaze. "That was Miskten, who let you in. She's from Town and my father pays her to take after my mom.. when I'm not around.."

"Oh."

"Did you find.."

"No." The game bag is still covering her hand and Katniss doesn't move any closer, in the worry that Madge will see the head wound. She leans a shoulder into the door frame. Moves her eyes to the window of the room. "You're alright?"

"Yes. My father didn't punish me. Laughed it off, really."

"Weird."

"I think it's the stress. He doesn't want to deal with a rebelling teenage daughter right now."

"I just wanted to check." Now, she feels guilty for not going straight home, seeing Madge is perfectly fine. She blames the headache for that mistake. "I'll go."

"You can stay," Madge offers hastily. The fact she does surprises Katniss more than she can say. "I have something for you."

"No," Katniss manages. "Prim is home, waiting. Gale, too. They're probably driving themselves mad with worry."

"Alright. But wait." Madge stands, moves fluidly down to her knees and reaches underneath her bed. A small white box is in her hands when she reemerges. "It's all I found." She's whispering now. Her eyes are dark and sad and hopeful. "My dad... when I was taken and put into his office, he got distracted from me. I found his keys. I broke into the doctor's office within the Justice Building. There were only eight. I was going to bring them to you tonight, but you're here already... and I didn't know where you went after we got separated.."

Katniss' mouth went dry, as she counted. _Primrose. Posy. Vick. Rory. Gale. Mother. Hazelle. Me._

"It's perfect," she says, haltingly. Katniss clasps her hands over Madge's on the box. Squeezes them momentarily. Would have pulled the girl into a hug, if not for the fact that she was too busy stashing the thing into her game bag. "It's.. _thank you_."

"Don't mention it."

"You have no idea.."

"I think I do."

Katniss overlooks Madge's face in guarded wonderment.

She remembers the last time someone selflessly helped her and her family before.

_Peeta._

Eight. _Primrose. Posy. Vick. Rory. Gale. Mother. Hazelle. Me._

_Eight isn't enough, _Katniss thinks, unbidden.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Instead of running home, Katniss stumbles down the streets at a slow, lulling pace. Physical pain has nothing to do with her lack of enthusiasm. Rather, she is counting. Over and over again. _Eight shots. There are only eight shots. _Primrose, Posy, Vick, and Rory are top priority. That's four. Half of the shots are permanently promised. Those are without a doubt going to the children.

Then there are the four other shots.

Gale needs one. She made him a promise to bring something home. He's family. But so is Mother and Hazelle. They're all important and she can't bear to loose them and she has done this _for them_. So there goes three more of the eight. Leaving her with one shot left.

For her?

But every time she thinks that, she sees the ugly, swollen, purple side of Peeta's face the day after he'd given her the life saving bread. Her mind goes to other things, too. To the overwhelming smell of from the ovens that rainy spring afternoon. Times when she'd caught him staring across the yard, turning away, pink in the face. Him purposely losing to her team in gym. Ridiculous little things, that don't _matter_.

The shot does matter. This shot could be life or death at some point in the future.

She weights her game bag around her neck, then notices the bloody hand. She has to go home, it's getting dark, she can see her house from where she's walking. Vick and Posy are running around the yard, teasing Lady. The goat bleats my coming.

_I'll tell them I already had my shot. _It'll work. She'll use her injures as distractions when they try to push her on that point. _I'll give them the seven and tuck the eighth into my hunting jacket._

Tomorrow, _I finally pay back the boy with the bread._

No more owing. She'll be free from the tugging at the back of her mind and she won't have to feel guilty or unease over the thought of Peeta Mellark dying. Ever again. The shot will be a thank you enough.

Gale appears in the doorway before Katniss is even in the yard. Relief is evident in his every feature as he struts over and wraps her in his arms. Katniss hisses in pain when her hand catches awkwardly against his side. "Watch it, you dolt."

Gale draws back, smiling faintly. He overlooks her with those dark and observant eyes. They linger on her face, on the side of her cheek. A hand raises, the pad of his thumb brushing the smudge of blood. His smile is gone and his face is hard. "Should I get my bow?" he asks.

"No." Katniss shakes her head; she regrets that when her temples pound. "No. I'm fine."

"No execution?"

"Not that I know of."

He pulls her in again and this time Katniss squirms, not in pain, but it is that he's being.. more _touchy _than usual. First, this morning, with the promises and now this.. she shoves her ravaged hand between them and that does the trick. Gale recoils, stares at the hand, her face, the yards around them, and then snatches her by the elbow, leading her inside.

After a small hug from Primrose, her mother switches into healing mode. The box of supplies is out, herbs, and Katniss goes to the kitchen table. She takes off her game bag, sets it carefully on the back of her chair and sits, sighing.

"Okay. Time to confess," Gale says and sits across from her.

Katniss glances up, and all she can think for a moment is that Peeta was sitting in that exact seat the last time she'd seen him. Then she rubs at the base of her skull and shows her mother the dried blood there.

"What happened?" her mother asks, much cooler in tone than Gale. There is no impending punishment and if there was one Katniss surely wouldn't have obeyed it. The idea her mother would try to discipline her is ridiculous and near aggravating.

Hazelle slips over and lays her hands on Gale's shoulders, rubbing slightly before she leans in and examines Katniss in the dim evening light. There is concern in her eyes, mirroring Gale's.

Katniss finds Prim's eyes over the Hawthorne's shoulders and finds those easier to meet. "I fell."

"From?"

"A ledge."

Gale grows frustrated. "You promised," he says. "You promised to tell me if I covered for you."

"I know." Katniss allows her eyes to flicker to his, then down to the table, then to her hand that her mother is working over. Cleaning alcohol stings and her voice comes out a little too breathless. "Madge and I broke into the Justice Building. We went to the morgue.. then we got separated. I went to the tracks and I broke into the train sitting there." She bobs her damaged hand in evidence. "Smashed a window. Then I tripped and bumped my head. That's all."

There is appall written in both the mother's faces. Gale is stoic. He knows there's a reason she would do those reckless, life-threatening things. And that makes him nervous, too. Because if it's worth a smashed window, a damaged bow hand, and the mayor's daughter than it has to be something extremely important. "The morgue? Why?"

Katniss can see the suspicions in him, half-there, guessing at motives. Even Hazelle looks a bit considering after he speaks, frowning, and glancing uncertainly at the children about them. Katniss notices them, too, ignorant to the serious discussion. "We were looking for something."

"What?" her mother asks, finishing the last, tight wrap of white cloth around her hand. They meet stares, one turning and the other lifting her chin, and Katniss pulls her hand back into her own property.

"This." Katniss twists in the chair, pulls the game bag into her lap and unzips the flap. Using the fabric as coverage, she rummages inside the white box, pulling out one of eight syringes and dropping it into the corner of the bag. She withdraws the white box, sets it on the table, zips the game bag and secures it around her chair once more.

The three around her are gazing at the box. "What is it?" Hazelle is the first to inquire.

"Medicine. Shots," Katniss says. Her mother takes the thing, opens the lid and hums her approval. "They're for the sickness. The one that's spreading through Town.. that got Delly Cartwright.."

"You found these on the train?" her mother asks.

"No. Madge smuggled them from the doctor's office in the Justice Building."

"Why were you looking for them?" Hazelle wants to know. Her voice is stronger than her mothers, but less emotionless and botanical when it comes to medical things. "Is there something we don't know?"

"I won't matter once you all take the shots. There are seven, enough for all of you. Madge and I already had ours. She was the one who told me they existed, when her father gave her one."

Primrose is suddenly there, at the end of the table. "I heard her say that, the night she came over. About the shot."

"Yes," Katniss agrees. She turns to her mother. "Can you give them?"

"Of course." Mrs. Everdeen takes one of the capped syringes out of the box and examines it. "Do you have any idea what are in these?"

"Does it matter?" Gale asks. "They have to be legitimate if they were taken from a Capitolite's personal stores. Other Townies have used them, and we don't see them dropping dead. We can take them and tomorrow morning Katniss and I will get rid of the evidence in the woods. No one will know and we're safe from getting sick." It was plain logic.

Mrs. Everdeen continues to look skeptical for a second longer, then nods Prim over to her. Katniss hooks an arm around her sister's waist and reels the girl into her lap, where she wriggles until she's comfortable. A pale arm is lifted and extended.. and for a moment Katniss remembers the train compartment, the child's arm, flung out. It could have anybody. Just as easily could have been her Primrose and she presses her lips to her sister's golden hair, unbearably. _Not anymore. _Can't be her, because Katniss watches raptly as the needles sinks into the crook of Prim's elbow.

Prim winces, rubs the small blot, and then steps aside. Hazelle lowers Posy on Katniss' lap next and this little girl squirms more and clings to Katniss' knee and cringes away from the needle. "Just a pinch," Gale tells, slipping around the table and catching her nose between two fingers. Katniss joins the game and pinches Posy's leg, as Gale pinches her sides and Mrs. Everdeen manages to get the shot in without her noticing.

Vick plays brave, but a few tears come and Hazelle hugs him on a hip. Rory and Gale are both tough enough and don't rebuke at all. (Neither get to sit on Katniss' lap.) Hazelle insists that Mrs. Everdeen gives herself a shot before her. Once they're over with the syringes are all placed back in the box which is tucked into the game bag.

Katniss breathes one long sigh of relief.

"Hungry?" Hazelle asks, setting a bowl of broth in front of her.

It isn't until she can smell it that Katniss realizes she is famished. "Thanks."

As she eats, Hazelle and Gale sternly tell the kids never to mention what has just happened here. No shots, nothing. They could get in a lot of trouble. And it's a concept all of them understand. Silence and secrets are things people in the Seam and in District 12 are taught from birth.

Sundown comes and the Hawthornes leave with it. Mrs. Everdeen rises to meet every one if them at the door, checking their complexions, touching their elbows, and she goes to both her daughter's afterward doing the same. "You're worried," Katniss accuses.

"Any good healer would be."

Her mother's worry seeps into her after an hour or so. She begins to fret over what was in those syringes and if Madge might have been fooled. Throughout the night, Primrose can't be pulled close enough and her mind won't rest. She doesn't sleep until an hour away from when she's supposed to meet with Gale. The dream is hazy and misted and shrouded by dark. But she remembers two sharp and vivid things about the nightmare by the time she's pulling on her boots. One was the compartment of dead, but instead of strangers, it was her family piled on top of each, the train rocking around them. The second was a warm and heavy arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her away, turning her from the horrifying sight. Instinctively the arm makes her think of her father. But somehow, she knows the sleeve had smelt of burnt bread.

In the morning she slips the eighth syringe into her boot, slinging the game bag around her shoulders. She crosses the Seam, slips under the gate and when Gale meets up with her, she hands him the offending white box full of evidence. They agree that if it's buried some animal might come across it. Katniss opts to climb a tree, and she wedges the box into a splintered trunk fifty feet up.

Back on the ground Gale asks her for more details about yesterday. As they hunt, she tells him, little and more. Everything that has been going on; the sickness, how it kills, why Madge and Peeta were over at her house. Gale curses when he hears about Madge's determination to help Katniss and their family. He says something about needing to apologize for always being rude. She doesn't think he will, but it's the thought that counts; he has too much pride to really apologize.

She doesn't tell him her worst fear. It's the kind you don't share. The one where if you speak it, you fear it will become the truth. Really, she thinks she's being paranoid and _silly_. Over and over again, she remembers the compartment. She tries to remember how many bodies there were; the number is elusive. All she can recall is that there were too many for her to wrap her head around in that five second period in which she stood there staring. She does not tell Gale about the compartment at all.

"Where do you think it came from?" he asks her as they hike back toward District 12. "This sickness."

Katniss looks at him, then around, at trees and, ultimately, the sky. This theory of hers, she _knows_ is silly. "Don't know," she says. "These things just happen. People get sick." Overhead she pin-points a small smudge of some bird in the distant blue. The _cawing_ of Delly rings in the back of her mind.

"I don't know, it seems.. too sudden. You know?"

Now she is really watching him. She knows that tone, that expression. "The Capitol?"

"Why not? It wouldn't be the first time they senselessly killed people from the districts."

That's true, of course. But.. "Why do they look so scared of it?"

"Show," Gale says, as though it were obvious. "Everything's all about presentation with them."

Katniss doesn't agree. _Then they have gotten better at acting, _she remarks silently. The day after Delly died, there had been an upping of Peacekeepers. All of them looked a bit apprehensive about being in District 12.. and the way Madge described her father's behavior would suggest unease beyond the potential collapsing of an underlining plot. "Why?" she asks, again. "It wouldn't make any sense. To kill people without them being an example? To lessen the populations of one of the smallest, poorest districts? That would be pointless."

_Pointless_, beyond pointless.

And just cruel enough to be possible.

Still, she does not know and they both shrug away the heaviness of the conversation. The trades go by in a blur. Primrose is ready and outside milking Lady when Katniss gets home and her mother is up, too. A small surprise and even more so, when she asks to see Katniss. Mrs. Everdeen takes her daughter by the chin and examines her face. It is awkward and stiff and Katniss resists the urge to twist her face away. "What is it?"

"Nothing." Her mother pets the cheek momentarily before Katniss does, in fact, rip her face away. Pain is there in the woman's eyes before she buries it and she kisses Prim goodbye, bidding both a good day at school.

Every step closer to the school makes the syringe heavier in her boot.

By the time they reach the yard, her heart is beating ridiculous heavy and her mouth is dry.

Stiffly, she goes through the motions, escorting Prim to her class, going to a locker she never really uses, sitting heavily in her seat beside Madge's empty one. After a minute or two, of tapping her foot and attempting to stare out the window, she rises again. She knows where Peeta is, of course. Out in the hall, surrounded by friends.

At the doorway she pauses, spots him easily and tries to think up a way to get him aside.

Peeta glances up over the heads of his friends, fleetingly, at her, where she stands. A tangled smile touches his face, but he doesn't attempt anything more, before his attention is back on his friends.

Katniss continues to stand there, leaning into the threshold, and instead of outright staring, her eyes pass around the hall, only occasionally landing on him. Hard and meaningful, she thinks, telling him her urgency to speak with him. Peeta never comes.

The bell rings and she waits even then, watching one kid after another pass her by and into the room. Peeta is last, and she's watched him purposely slink to the back, too. That makes me stomach twist.

_He's avoiding me. _

Why?

Katniss grabs his elbow before he can slink passed. "We have to talk."

Peeta recoils from her touch, moving his arm away, refusing to meet her gaze. He rubs the spot where she touched him, wincing. _Weakling, _she thinks, unbidden, to cover up all her other worries, _I hadn't grabbed him that hard. _"Not now," Peeta mumblers and enters the classroom.

Katniss sits through the entire class, aware that Peeta is ignoring her.

But, relieving, by the time the class ends, he stands and waits. When she steps up to him, he steps away, leading them out the class and down the hall. He is staring at her wrapped hand. "You weren't in school yesterday," he says. "I thought.."

"No." His worry is misplaced. She refuses for it to matter. "I'm not sick."

"Your hand?"

"Tripped."

That earns her a disbelieving glance. But he lets the matter fall. He looks away and they reach a locker. His, she assumes, by the way he moves to open it. "You wanted to talk," Peeta says.

Katniss eyes the people all around. "Somewhere.. less crowded."

His lips press together. _Displeasure _shines in his eyes. "Here's fine."

"No." Her fingers itch to pull the syringe out of her boot, and show him, to get this over with. "Outside." If she slips the shot to him and tells him to simply use it, she wonders if he won't. That she might have to make sure he uses it, by watching. Peeta shakes his head at her suggestion. Katniss lifts an impatient hand and rests it on his forearm. Peeta flinches away. Her stomach pulls tighter. "Sorry," she says, dismissively, too quick to ever be genuine. Her hand feels awkward and heavy at her side now. _Stop touching him, _she chides herself. _Gale, _she blames. All that new touching, she's can't get comfortable with it, for anyone.

"No, it's alright." Peeta closes the locker and carefully pulls the strap of his bag around his shoulder. His eyes search the surrounding area. "Just.. still sore, is all."

"Sore enough that, _that_ hurt?" she asks. It is her turn to look disbelieving. Some girls call him a gentleman, but if he's trying to use that as an excuse from not wanting to be touched by her, than he's got to work on his excuses.

Underneath all that, she feels the familiar tug. To flee, to abandon him, because if _that_ hurt, how long until walking is too much for him? Until his whole body is too much for his heart to beat?

"If you don't want my help then–"

"Help?" Peeta asks. "I don't see.."

Katniss takes his hand this time; it seems _that_ couldn't possibly hurt. She tugs him down the hall and out the nearest door. No one is out so early, there are no windows here, but she looks around the abandoned length of the side of the school before she drops his hand and leans to her boot.

"What is that?" Peeta asks when she pulls off the cap. The needle catches the sunlight. He slides closer to the door and away from her. "Did your mom say to give me that?"

"No. No one can know." Katniss breathes. "Take it. I owe you this."

"You don't owe me anything."

"Yes, I do. But if you take this I won't anymore."

Distantly, the class bell rings. Neither of them stir.

"What's it for?"

"To keep you from getting sick."

Peeta eyes brighten, his hands move and find her wrist. He pulls the needle away from himself and closer to her. "You take it. You need this. Has Prim had one?"

The mention of Prim unnerves her. "Yes. My whole family has. You need to take this, not me. I got this for you." _That's a lie,_ she thinks instantly. Madge got the shots. She got them for her family. Not Peeta.

"Then you'd be wasting it," Peeta says, grimly. "It's already too late for me. You need it."

"Too late? No. You said the Peacekeepers.."

"They lied."

"But.."

"It's alright. I'm not going to get anyone else sick, I'm careful." His hands on her suddenly withdrawal. "Just.. take the shot, because I can't bare to think you might get sick. That you could get sick from _me_."

She looks him over. His face and his lips and his hands. Nothing is off, though. He looks perfect. The same boy she's always seen in school; blonde waves over his pale face, unchapped rosy lips, sturdy figure. "But you don't look.." There is a cringe. She doesn't miss it. The way he shrinks away further. "Show me."

"Katniss..."

"Show me."

"I really don't think–"

"Show me or I put the needle in myself."

Peeta surrenders, then, painstakingly. Reluctantly, he leans into the wall of the school, draws his leg up (the same leg he'd flinched away from her mother) and rolls the pant leg to mid-calf. Katniss crouches without thought, a hand reaching and tracing the line of black. There are more, hundreds it seems, tiny and spreading and pulsing. _They're his veins, _she realizes, and Peeta looks uncomfortable with her there, touching him. "Bad, huh?"

Katniss doesn't know what to say. The sight is appalling, makes her feel a bit green in the face. She stands, but her eyes don't stray from the blackening limb. A healer.. a healer would know.. she doesn't..

"Take the shot, then we go to my mom. She'll know what's wrong."

"I think it's pretty obvious what's happening."

"It's not blood poisoning."

"That would hurt. This doesn't hurt, I don't feel my leg anymore where it's gone black. It's dying." Peeta rolls down his pant leg again, and as he leaned over, he adds, softly, "I am."

"No you're not." Katniss takes his arm and shoves aside his sleeve. Peeta struggles with her. "Stop moving. You're taking this shot." She tries to lower it over his elbow, but his hand encases hers, and they fight over the control. But he's stronger, that's undoubted.

She breaks away from him, ripping her hand free and scowls. "Won't you just let me help you?"

"I'm not going to let you take risks for my sake," is Peeta's calm reply.

"Why? That's not fair. You've done it for me!"

"That's different."

"No it's not." She takes a step closer again and Peeta pulls away. This frustrates her, too.

"Look, the shot won't even work. Not only is it too late, but I don't even have what Delly and all the others have. This is different.."

"How do you know? They all have to do with blood. Just.. just yours isn't escaping, its dying from the inside out. It's just backwards, is all. The shot could still work. It's worth a try."

"No," Peeta says, shaking his head. "Just no. I won't take it, when you haven't had one."

"I have," she pipes up. Too fast, too high-pitched.

"You're a terrible liar."

Katniss closes her eyes, breathes. The fingers around the syringe contort slightly in her rush of chagrined vexation. Peeta doesn't stir, but she can feel his eyes boring into her face, too honest, too earnest.. _defeated_, too. He _can't_ give up, though. She remembers when she wanted to give up. Remembers the apple tree and the trash bins and the splash of his feet in the puddles. The burnt bread that fed her family for a week.

It's not fair, but she never claimed to fight fair before. Katniss opens her eyes and lurches toward Peeta, who stiffens underneath the weight of her chest on his and gasps when their mouths lay against each other. It's her first kiss; her lips are unyielding and pressed awkward on his shocked ones. It doesn't last long. He jerks away at the pinch in his arm and his hands curl over her shoulders and push her aside, looking horrified. "You can't.. are you.. haven't you heard a thing we've said? You can't kiss.." His eyes fly to the blood beading on his arm, to the empty syringe in her hand.

Ironic how Peeta suddenly _does_ look like he's going to be sick.

"You should have taken it when I asked," Katniss tells him. Her chest is heavy with a hundred different emotions and thoughts and she feels the heat in her face, betraying her. With the syringe in her hand, she flees, and dashes inside, down the hall and (panicking slightly) she decides to stash the evidence into her locker until after school when she can really get rid of it.

Peeta is in the hall by the time she slams it shut. He's still pale and his eyes are burning when they meet hers across the hall. Katniss runs again, to get away, and she feels her throat tighten at the sight of him trying to hurry after her. But he limps on his bad leg and can't catch up even though he wants to.

Breathless she gets to the door of her second class. The teacher sighs and glares and marks her down once more. There are plenty of curious glances thrown her way when she moves to her desk. No one speaks, though, and she sits. Replays the whole argument in her head as the time passes. Fingers raise to rest on her lips. They're dry, untouched, really. There was no passed bodily fluids. She won't get sick from it, if he can even get her sick in the first place.. and..

She did the right thing, she decides. If she had another chance at that, she wouldn't change a thing about what she did. The kiss was because of what he told her and she knew it would distract him. It was a deceiving, manipulative thing to do to him. To use his feelings against him like that. But he wouldn't have been convinced into the shot, and she couldn't overpower him in physical force...

She did the right thing.

She doesn't owe him a thing anymore. She tried, if nothing else.

She doesn't have to feel guilty about the bread and his face, now. Is allowed to shove him from mind and pretend he doesn't exist. Gets to forget all about him and not care if he dies or is hurt.

But that's not true. _I still feel bad._

The idea he could still die, slowly, one limb.. one painstaking vein at a time.. makes her want to retch.

Inaudibly, she groans, props up her elbows and buries her face in her hands.


	7. Chapter Seven

A/N: I know it's been forever. I'm sorry. I still have plans for this. Thank you for reading and all the reviews.

* * *

Chapter Seven

A week passes and Peeta cannot even look at Katniss.

Katniss doesn't mind; she lives on. Is glad that he is not dead five days after she's given him the shot. The rest of her family is equally healthy and robust, whether thanks to the shot or not. Not that one could say the same for the handful of other slowly withering people about the district.

The first week is spent uncertainly. Gale and Katniss watch themselves, and they watch their siblings, and those who touch and speak to their siblings. They stick close, pull their sisters and brothers closer, and hardly part. When she has time, she notices Peeta limping through the hall, and he does not come to school for three days out of five. (Each time her chest tightens, but she breathes again when she sees him later that day, working at the bakery, skipping school for a job.) Friday ends with Gin Panders collapsing in the hall; Katniss is not surprised to hear about her death the following Sunday.

Monday dawns with the first Seam child vomiting blood on the Everdeen's doorstep. The little girl dies on their kitchen table six hours later. Katniss goes hunting, and drags Primrose along. Something she never does, because Prim is frightened half the time beyond the gate and she does not like putting her sister in unnecessary danger of the law. This is an exception, though. Her mother won't leave the infected patients well alone, but Prim, at least, can be coaxed away with a hearty pleading and Katniss' utmost encouragement.

Their mother keeps them home come Tuesday. Katniss sits in bed and tells Prim old stories, until Gin Pander's mother comes in, supporting a sick husband and they flee to the Hawthorne's house. There, she curls up on their couch, smiles thinly at Posy and indulges the girl with dolls and plays along. Primrose and Rory sit on the floor, conversing. Eventually Gale sits beside Katniss and tucks her under an arm; she leans into him, he is solid and healthy... and his chest does not shake violently, does not rattle and bubble with liquid as he _caws_.

And this happens frequently; because soon, all manners of Town people are coming to Mrs. Everdeen, in hopes that she can aid them, where they can not afford the aid of the Capitol or the doctor of District 12. The mayor ignores their questions, mostly. Madge has not been seen since the night she gave Katniss the shots; this worries Katniss, but she is determined to appear unwavering, for everyone else.

"I'm scared," Prim whispers Thursday night, curled up into Katniss' side. Posy is snoring on Prim's other side and Katniss can hear the sighs and snores of all the other Hawthornes in the house around them; their mother advised them not to return home just yet.

Katniss breathes deep, hoping to calm her own voice, and runs a hand through the silky blonde hair.

"You're safe. You took the shot," she reassures. "This will pass."

"How?"

"It just needs to burn out."

Prim is silent. Then, "That's what that girl said. Daisy. She said it _burned_. Like fire."

"It can't last forever." _But neither can we, _Katniss thinks, unbidden.

Thankfully, Prim does not think the same, or if she does, doesn't speak her objection.

By Friday, two weeks passed, Gale and Katniss have no choice but to go to Town in hopes of trade; they don't run out of food with all the extra time to hunt, but they need other things, other supplies. The Hob is near empty, near closed, and they stumble upon Haymitch Abernathy demanding he get his white liquor from Ripper. The woman is earnestly telling the man that she doesn't have any; the supply train for this month never came. She doesn't have anything she needs to make it on her own; he'll just have to wait.

Katniss slinks over once the paunchy man staggers away, cursing profusely about the late Capitol train. She places a hand on the counter and leans toward Ripper. "The supply train hasn't come for _this_ month?" she asks. "But there's only five days until the next. It can't be _that_ late."

Gale grumbles at her side. She silences him with a glance.

Ripper shrugs one arm high. "You didn't ask me, but I don't think it's late, really. Just not coming."

"Not coming.."

"What do you do when you've got a bruised, ugly piece of an apple?" Ripper asks keenly.

Gale answers the question somberly, "You eat it, you don't waste it just because it's ugly."

Ripper rewards him a small smile. "Exactly. You wouldn't. I wouldn't. District Twelve wouldn't. But the Capitol isn't us. They don't want the rotten piece of their apple interfering or infecting the rest of it. "

Katniss understands perfectly. The Capitol doesn't want the Districts interfering with their perfection. They never have. Just.. how long do they plan on ignoring the problem? Until they're all dead? Until they've all been burned out? Will they simply gather a new population for the mines once the original population of District 12 is gone? Katniss nods her goodbye, turns, and after a small mental deliberation (she thinks of visiting Madge, or Peeta, because she thinks of the missing supply train, and his extra work hours, and wonders how well the bakery is doing if they can not bake bread.. then remembers she isn't supposed to care about that anymore – she doesn't owe him...) and makes the decision to return to her family.

Another week passes. The new month comes. There are no trains.

Katniss and Gale try to trade, but no one has anything to give for their meat.

Finally, a train does come in the middle of the first week. People peek out their windows and venture close in hope. Only to watch as the masked Peacekeepers collect the corpses of the dead that have been layed out, ready for burial. Then, without a word of comfort or assurance, they depart. This happens three times again in the next three day; there has to be at least sixty bodies in total. Enough dead to rival the amount of death Katniss has seen in the Hunger Games.

Gale comes home with reports about the people that bombard the Justice Building with questions. He is under the impression that the people in the Justice Building are just as equally abandoned to this threat. No one has seen the mayor to confirm anything, and Katniss knocks on Madge's window late one night in vain.

School becomes a joke. No one can go in fear of getting sick. Primrose and Katniss become a regular piece of the Hawthorne household. They hunt near all the time, not only to get away from the district, but to feed everyone in the household. What can be spared (which is very little) is given to the family of the most recent victim. Mrs. Everdeen does not come to visit often, and Katniss thinks that is for the best. Her mother is happier helping the sick, and not being treated as the sick.

Then – impossibly – it starts to get worse.

Rye Mellark death comes to Katniss' attention three days after it happened. She stops what she's doing (mending a tear in Prim's pants) and looks up at her mother for half a heartbeat, before she goes back to the task at hand, stiffer than before. She knows every time she sees her kitchen table now she's going to think of the Mellark that died there. And then to add worse to worst, she returns from hunting that same night and her sister mentions the list of people that their mother has seen, and _Peeta Mellark _is on that list.

Katniss is kicking off her boots, but pauses. "What was that?" she asks.

Prim look up from Rory and cocks her head slightly. "Peeta Mellark."

"What was he doing there? He isn't sick, is he?" Katniss is aware of Gale's eyes on her back.

"I saw him there, that's all."

Katniss calms herself, and tells herself she will slip out later to speak with her mother about it. But later never comes. Gale is watching her. Posy wants her to tuck her in. Vick and Prim curl up around her on the coach and Rory is telling a story that must be completely made up, because both Hazelle and Gale are rolling their eyes. The night passes without pause. Then the next day, too. Four days pass, slowly. Most of them uneventful, but busy with small, necessary task. Unless you're Mrs. Everdeen. Or the one with her that is, in fact, dying.

Katniss slips out on the fifth day at sunset.

She's a mess, of course. Hair ruffled and unwashed, face tired and tight, clothes dotted with animal blood and soap from when she had helped Hazel with the wash. However, the air is nice and light outside. Katniss savors this. Lets the burden on her shoulders lift with the breeze and float high and away.

Then a Peacekeeper sees her nearing town and raises a gun.

At first she isn't sure what to do. She pauses. Her eyebrows arch slightly, but she stays otherwise still. The man, the Peacekeeper, paces forward, eying her. "What's in that bag there?" He indicates her game bag.

"A squirrel," she answers. "And goat cheese."

"Well then, give it here."

Katniss clutches a hand around the strap on her shoulder. "It's not for trading."

"I wasn't going to give you anything for it, darling." He's mocking her. "I'm hungry."

When she moves to argue or object, the Peacekeeper makes his gun more apparent. The bullets click into place and he smirks in an infuriating way. Katniss throws the squirrel and cheese at him and stomps away. It's not worth dying for. Not when Primrose needs her.

But two Peacekeepers relieve her of her empty bag as she is passing through town square.

A third tries to con her out of her father's hunting jacket on the steps of the bakery. At that point she is wroth and threatens in return, reaching for her knife. This Peacekeeper seems more nervous than the rest however and this proves to be useful. Without much of a fight the Peacekeeper sidles off.

The bakery's doors are locked and the sign reads closed. All curtains cover the windows. She knocks.

A female voice shouts back, "We've said it once, I won't say it twice! We aren't paying no tribute!"

"No.. tribute," Katniss replies, uncertain. It occurs to her she's here. At the Mellarks. _Why_, again? "I just.." _Just what?_

Another voice pipes up, "Katniss? Hold on, I have this.."

There's the sound of grumbling, then coughing. Footsteps.. no. A footstep nears, accompanied by a heavy, horrible dragging sound. Doors open. A lock clicks. Chains clank against the other side of the wood and suddenly, it's open and Peeta is there. He looks around the street, grabs her arm and says, "Hurry, before they see us."

Inside the front of the bakery there's no lights on, only the sunlight illuminating closed curtains and the streams of yellow falling from the crack underneath the door that leads to the kitchens. Overhead is the sound of voices, coughing, and footsteps.

Thinking of footsteps, Katniss' eyes fall to Peeta's leg. It's held aloof. He's leaning into the front counter, lowering himself into a stool, wincing. She doesn't move to join him, but nears. She feels skittish. Can't remember why she came. She thinks of his brother. "I'm sorry, about Rye," she murmurs.

"Thank you."

The coughing upstairs turns to vomiting. Katniss feels her stomach whirl and she sits in the stool next to him, only to hide the unease. He notices anyway. "My mother," he says, and is watching her face.

She wonders what reaction is supposed to be there. Saying "Good" comes to mind but she merely nods.

"How's your family?" he asks. Awkward hangs in the air, because he's suddenly realizing _she_ is there. Here. With him. Came to his home, sought him out in this strange time. Yet. For a moment Katniss feels as though the distress is distant. It is a slow thing. A tedious disaster. It isn't the immediate type.

Is somehow soothed at this moment.

"They're fine." More than fine. All alive. She doesn't want to rub it in his face. "How are you?"

"Dandy." His smile is brittle. When Katniss makes no move to return it, or change her smooth expression, he sighs and rubs at his knees. "Alive, still."

"And your leg?" If she didn't know any better, she might dare to say her voice sounds detached and professional. Like some careless medical attendant. This is no warm friendly chat full of concern. And she sees that he knows this.

"Honestly?" Peeta laughs wheezily. It cracks. "I'm too scared to look."

Katniss doesn't know what to do with that. She frowns.

"Yeah, I know. I'm a coward." He rolls his eyes, shrugging.

"Yes." Katniss is surprised when Peeta laughs more at that; isn't offended. There's a small tug on her own lips, but was never meant to be a true smile. Her eyes are too focused at the moment. "Has my mother seen it?" _He was there the other day._

"No."

"Why not? You're not like the others who are sick. She can't help them. Maybe you.."

_Does he have no sense of self preservation? _she wonders.

"Can't affor–"

"My mother won't make you pay," Katniss insists, almost insulted by that.

Peeta waits for her to finish, holds her gaze and retries.. "I can't afford to lose my leg."

"You're losing it right now. If you don't get healed how do you expect to keep it?"

"I _mean_," Peeta says, as sharp as he's ever gotten with her, "she'll take it from me. I remember her amputation story. Saw the marks."

"Even if it saves your life?"

Peeta stares down at his hands for a second. Then; "What life would it be?"

Katniss opens her mouth to object, but finds nothing. It's true. District 12 has no place for cripples. It would be a homeless life, with no job, no food, no respect. No miners will be taken legless. Even in the bakery Katniss doesn't expect he'll be particularly useful – families like his only reach so far. And at the rate the district is going who knows if the bakery will survive without supply trains.

Her mouth closes and Peeta doesn't look up from his lap.

For long moments there's silence. Upstairs the witch of a mother is _cawing_.

"Have you heard about the Peacekeeper's tributes?" Peeta asks, composed again.

"No."

"It's just... them, trying to tax us. They want money, food, anything they can take really. They're saying it's their right. The Justice Building isn't doing a thing about it and so they think it's okay. My brother.." he halts.

"Your brother?"

"He thinks it's only a matter of time before their confidence grows and the Peacekeepers overthrow the Justice Building entirely."

The news is bad. It explains the harassing she got on her trip. Why there is no one out and about. It's something her family needs to know as soon as possible. When the Peacekeepers sweep Town clean of what they want, then they'll head out to the Seam and take anything that's worth taking. She stands and Peeta looks up at her, surprised. "I have to go back, it's late."

"Okay."

She hesitates.

"I won't come back." It's true. She won't. She won't have time. Shouldn't have risked..

This upsets Peeta's face for a moment, but he composes himself. "Goodbye, Katniss."

"Goodbye."

Thinking it's all he'll ever have, he walks her to the door, limping. She ignores the way his hand hovers near hers in the air. The door opens. For a moment, it seems he wants to say something, but he struggles to find words.

Peeta watches with remorse as Katniss rushes down the front steps, and disappears down the street.

It'll be the last time he sees her that year.

* * *

Winter passes in a daze.

Chaos meets plague when the supply train ceases to exist. Peacekeepers seem to be looking for the train, too, with desperate, hopeful eyes – but Gale must be right, because no one is saving the Capitol place men and women any more than the others. They are doomed to the citizen's own apparent fate. They build their own way of surviving; bullying. They use their guns to force people to give up their precious supplies and to ward off the sick, locking themselves up in their barracks.

After near a month, Peeta's brother's prediction comes true. There is a fight in the Justice Building one night; between whom, Katniss can't know. But the Peacekeepers must come out victorious, because they are the only ones coming and going from there now. Darius' corpse is left laying spread eagle in Town square. For some reason beyond her, people begin dragging the infected there. Corpses pile up without a train to haul them away. Cray and his remaining Peacekeepers demand they be put somewhere else. There's a slight tension over this.

Eventually the order comes that Katniss dreaded. They go to the Meadow, where they can be burned.

But she's not the only one who feared this. Those who still live are bitter, are scared. They have suffered more, their own diminished supplies taken by the Peacekeepers.

There, in the Meadow, the people of District 12 revolt under the gunpoint of the Peacekeepers.

Of all of this, the Hawthornes and Everdeens try not to participate. Most of the time they hunt in the forest (where they can find some more of the braver and desperate citizens, attempting survival without the electric gate being used). They sit in their house when not out beyond the dangers of the district and wait. Or tend to the sick. Or play and tell stories to distract the children. Katniss and Prim rarely see their mother, and haven't been back to their own house in weeks.

Winter brings snow. This encourages more people inside. The dead don't both seeking aid. They die in the streets, hacking scarlet over white. No one feels motivation to move the corpses.

Prey becomes scarce, as it always does in the season. Ribs and hips and collarbones become sharp and fine, faces thin and solemn. Katniss runs her fingers down Primrose's stomach when they sleep at night and she frowns into the girl's hair. Their mother looks pale most days and as if the wind will pick her up and sweep her into the clouds – yet remains uninfected. Skinny, pale, but healthy. The whole lot of them.

After Gale threatens a fight (and Katniss reels him in), they lose Lady to the tax as well as the remaining drugs Mrs. Everdeen possessed. Prim cries for days.

Peacekeeper and citizen clashing continues hot in Town. Rarely the conflict moves beyond the Justice Building or square. Someone from one side or the other burns the Mayor's house down. Katniss hears there was no one there anyhow. She wonders if the Underseas abandoned the district in the fall and Madge is somewhere beautiful. Perhaps the Capitol, lavishing and robust. The thought is too bitter and ungrateful, and isn't worth thinking.

They wait, still, for something. Waiting as the people fight over power. In the end, a straggling group of Townspeople land on top, and they hold the guns (the true meaning of power left to the district) and, considering that they are even more paranoid and careful than the Peacekeepers, Katniss expects them to take what they can, then retreat to the Justice Building..

But no.

Their power lasts no more than a few days, as the sky clears up and soil thaws. The sun rises on the first day of spring with mockingjays singing harmonies. Katniss wakes to the sound of running feet, sucked at by the mud, and voice rising outside. Worried about riots, Gale shakes his own mother awake and Katniss rushes toward the door, tripping over a chair on the way there. Standing in the front yard, she grabs Gale's arm for support and he slips an arm around her waist. There's no impending fight. Outside, not too distant, they can hear what everyone is moving toward: a high, thin whistle.

She can imagine the sight. A shining silver train cutting through the morning mist, sliding into the drab little coal mining district as if from a different world. The Capitol, finally returned. A collective sigh is in the air. Someone shouts hope and Katniss turns to see who –

Then behind her she hears gagging.

Prim, pale, stands not a foot away. They catch gazes. There is panic there, but something else. Something like an apologetic wish. As if to say sorry, for something she's done wrong. And this is moments before she doubles over and vomits blood on Katniss' boots.


	8. Chapter Eight

A/N: Yes! Finally getting back into writing (I've been on a block lately) and I'm glad I got this update all done today. Maybe we'll see more on other stories. I've been working on another Mute chapter and.. I know The Expecting Mockingjay hasn't been touched in years, but I promise it's not abandoned, it'll be finished! Thank you for reading, thank you so much for reviews. Enjoy.

* * *

Chapter Eight

She can't move, let alone _breathe_.

_How? _she thinks. _How has this happened?_

Katniss is frozen, horror-struck. Gale, however, rushes forward to scoop Prim up in his arms. Blond hair falls lank over his arm and Katniss is finally stirred by the sight of the sunlight dancing over it. She takes Prim's face into hand and _searches_. For what, she's not sure. She certainly finds pain, and that ridiculous apology again. Prim tries to speak, but sputters, coughs, and Katniss' face scrunches underneath the spray of blood.

Hazel hauls Gale toward the house and Katniss trails uselessly behind, heart racing, begging her to run and panic and throw things and _help_, but she can't. She rubs the blood from her cheeks. Posy is sobbing, and a ghost of an energetic boy named Rory is supporting her. Vick is no where to be seen.

Gale lays Prim on the table. He turns as soon as Mrs. Everdeen swoops in and before Katniss can reach her sister, Gale takes her by the shoulders and corals her back outside. "No, I have to.. I have to.." she tries to object, but even the anger seems futile.

"You don't have to see, Katniss."

_But I do! _she wants to shout. Instead she feels the urge to punch something, to pull her hair out. A scream from the house ignites Katniss' blood and the anger isn't so useless, because she feels as though she could burn anything, _something_. The train whistle sounds again in the distance.

Gale tries to distract her, to calm her before he lets her go become even more anguished. "I wonder why they're back. To help?" Katniss doesn't care. She moves to enter the house again and Gale bars her way. "Do you think they have supplies?"

"No." The answer is harsh. _Even he isn't that optimistic. _"Everyone knows exactly why they came, they just don't want to say it." The subject already has her agitated and the sound of Posy's own scream seems to disturb Gale.

Still, he persists on the subject, pushing her shoulders back. His eyes flicker over his shoulder. "What?"

"Don't pretend the thought hasn't occurred to you."

"It hasn't," Gale says, and seems earnest. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Gale," Katniss says, _sharply_. He focuses back on her, blinking. "What time of year is it?"

At first he's lost, then a light goes off... and his entire face darkens. "The Games."

This distraction gives her enough time to shove him to the side and rush passed. Inside, blood has taken over the scents in the air. Hazel, too, tries to hold Katniss back, but she won't be stopped. She may not understand how this has happened or why she couldn't have noticed the symptoms, but damn the odds before they hold her back from her sister's death bed.

Mrs. Everdeen works coolly on her youngest daughter. Except Katniss doesn't think she's imagining the tremor in her hands as she packs Prim's profusely bleeding nose with cloth. Two hands are wrapped tight around her throat and Katniss tries to pull away, but her sister fights back. "Burns," she gasps, rubbing her neck. "Not – not like.." she breaks into a cough and never finishes the statement.

Katniss sits at the table. Holds tight with one hand on Prim's arm and the other running through her hair. The nose bleeds for an hour, and afterward, Prim is still breathing irregularly, weak. Katniss thinks intently of the shots. Had Madge been tricked? Were they faulty? Time limited?

"How long have you been feeling sick?" their mother asks.

Prim turns her head to look at the ceiling. "Just last night. I felt.. a tickle in my throat. Then this morning, I woke and it was burning and I.. my stomach jumped, the blood just came.. I didn't.."

"Hush," Katniss murmurs, petting her brow. She's burning up. Distressed, she looks to her mother, but the woman is staring somewhere beyond the two girls.

"I thought.. the shots.." Prim tries to say.

"Hush." Katniss' throat zips tight. _I thought, too. _"You'll be fine.

_Will she be?_

She doesn't know and she sits there for hours, thinking. Her mother comes by to scrub the blood completely from her face and question if she ingested any of it. Katniss can't answer that with any certainty (nor does she opt to mention the shot she never actually took). Next goes her boots and socks, Hazel dosing them in bleach. The table is cleaned around Prim and the cloths on her nose changed. Gale departs with Rory in tow, hoping to find some news about what's happening in Town.

They're gone for hours. Dark comes and Hazel gets worried as she puts Vick and Posy to bed with kisses on their crown and questions about their throat. Mrs. Everdeen sits in a chair, folding clothes and setting them aside, checking on Prim's temperature ever so often. Prim herself is a bit out of it, weary eyed and foggy, if not completely asleep.

Katniss hears Rory crashing through the yard even before he hits the house. "Hide her!" he shouts. "They'll take her if they find her. She's sick and.." But Katniss is already standing and puling Prim into her chest with an arm underneath the knees and around the shoulders.

"Where?" she demands.

"Anywhere," Rory says, breathless. "Gale is stalling them, but they'll get here any minute. Go and don't come back until–"

Katniss is already _gone_. She doesn't know who _they_ are, or where to go, but she goes out the back door and rushes through the moonlit grass behind the nearest house. She slinks around lights and distantly she hears commotion in the Seam. Yelled objections echo out. A "No, no! Please!" somewhere here and there. Orderly marching steps ring deathly in her ears, probing her further.

Prim is heavy, though. Sweat gathers on her brow and lower back, but the night is still a little cold for spring and she tries to ignore the pins and needles spreading up her arms and into her shoulders. Prim lulls her head at one point, and coughs. _Caw, caw, cawing._ "Shh, hush, Prim. They'll hear you.." and nothing is more obviously the fleeing sick if they can't stop coughing.

However, she can't. The coughs rack violet through her and her chest heaves against Katniss'. Prim tries though, to hold them back, to press her hands tight to her face and control the noise. In the end, the infection wins, and her lungs don't want the lungs to fill – blood is soon pooling between them, splattered up Katniss' throat. Her heart begins pounding in fear and adrenaline when the nose bleed starts up again in steady stream.

_How much blood can she lose in her tiny body before she's dead?_

She's not sure where to hide. She can't go back to their home, because from the shadows she sees the Peacekeepers – newly arrived, severe looking Peacekeepers – barging into every door they come across. Her guess is that they already swept through Town. The forest seems the best option, but that plan is ravished when she hears the buzz coming off the fence.

Lost, arms numb and shaking slightly, Katniss flees not toward Town or the Seam.

She comes across the Victor's Village.

Silence and calm gathers there, so empty. It's eerie with the commotion in the distance. There's a bench on the side of the road Katniss doesn't hesitate to slumps onto_._ Carefully, she brushes sweat damp hair from Prim's face. It's awkward, cradling her in her lap and against her blood soaked chest. But worth it. Not worth having any lost moment – except that doesn't matter because Prim is almost too vague to keep her eyes open.

Stories come to mind, something nice to tell her, to spare her reality for a few seconds, but Katniss can't find her voice or her breath. Her hands shake as she wipes the worst of the blood off her sister's face.

They sit for what seems hours. Eventually her back and upper legs go cold and unfeeling and she shifts to lay Prim across the bench and she unfurls on the ground beside it. Prim sleeps, but Katniss sits wide awake, watching the moon, the empty, unlit houses around them – so perfectly untouched and made – and the Town as well.

She wonders what her family is doing, what lie they said. If they even had to lie.

She worries about them, about _Prim_.

"What do I do?" she whispers to herself. "How can I help?"

More importantly, _What is this?_

After another half hour, the night not near close enough to over, Prim wakes, begging for water. When Katniss says, "Soon, soon," Prim doesn't seem to listen and begins screaming, frantic for a drink. It comes to the point where Katniss has to wrestle her hands from her throat, and still, there are bloody nail streaks marring her once untouched skin.

"Please, please." She is sobbing, thrashing feebly. "It burns, Katniss. It burns."

"Okay." The sight is too much. Seeing Prim in this state is tearing at Katniss' heart and mind in horrific ways, damaging who knows what, and she can't deny her anything. She scoops Prim up, and looks about. There's only one house with an occupant – no doubt with the door unlocked.

_He won't miss a glass of water_, Katniss thinks.

As she nears the house, she sets Prim to the side of the front steps, pressing a finger to her lips and promising to come back with water. This settles her sister and Katniss approaches the door cautiously.

There are no lights on inside or outside and peering into the window reveals one of the most horrendous messes she's ever seen. The stink gathers in her nose the moment she twists the knob and just barely cracks it open. She waits, listens, holds her breath. There is no sound. Only reek.

Carefully, and as silent as she can manage (which is impossible, since she can't see the floor, let alone touch it) Katniss moves through the front room. She assumes the victor is passed out upstairs or in the living. Haymitch is a famous drunkard – but she remembers the train supply taking that and wonders if he's in some painful withdrawal. Or infected and dead.

In the kitchen she finds an old, intact empty bottle of liquor on the floor. It works. She rises it out and then fills it in the sink, the water on just a dribble, agonizingly slow and every stray drop a hurricane of noise. Afterward she moves to go back out the front door, but sees an open window in the room across the kitchen and decides it will be easy to drop from there.

As she's creeping through the room, Prim screams outside.

There's a grunt, a straggled sound, and a flash of movement across the room and Katniss breaks into a run. But not before a flare of pain catches her forehead and spills red into her vision. She knows she reaches the window when her knees slam into the frame. Hefting herself up without thought, behind her back Haymitch shouts, "Sneaking up on a man while he's– you're lucky I missed!"

She's lucky that old useless man can't aim.

Outside she hits the ground wrong and a pain tears up from her heel to her backside and she stumbles onto her knees momentarily, before reminding herself that Prim is waiting. She hobbles her way around front, swiping to keep her vision clear.

Knowing she has to go, now, she hands the bottle to Prim and stoops to pick her up. The going is slow and painful, worse than before. The water is gone only minutes later, Prim scarcely satisfied. "Whe–" she tries to speak, hoarse and sad. "Where – ?"

"Where are we going?" Katniss murmurs. Prim nods. "I'm not sure."

She wants so bad to wipe the blood off her face, that slowly beads down her nose and cheek, around the eye, but her hands are full. _How?_ she keeps asking herself. _How did this happen? How did this come here? To this? _There's some dread in her stomach bubbling, telling her that she has forgotten to take precaution with Prim – the infection can spread through blood. But the worry is minimal in comparison to all the others.

Again, she reviews her refuge spots. The forest is a no. The Seam is still full of lights and shouting. Madge's house is nothing but ash and charred support beams. Where in Town could she hide? Somewhere no one would give them away. Who wouldn't turn Prim out because she is sick.

Who wouldn't turn Katniss out.

She finds herself at the bakery's back door for the second time in her life not for trading, but in need.

Last time she hadn't asked. Was insulted when she received the miracle, the hope. So when she knocks – softly, and only twice, unable to put Prim down – she is reluctant, scowling, unwilling to admit even in her obvious state of desperation that she needs help. It's to the point she's going to tell herself it's not worth it – when the door cracks open.

"Who is it?" It's not Peeta, but his older brother. "What do you need?"

Katniss opens her mouth to speak, but there is something so grim about him.

"You're looking for Peeta."

She nods, silent. Prim twists in her arms, covers her mouth and tries to quiet the cough, but the infection is clear already. The Mellark isn't stupid. He turns and calls out for someone. Peeta's father steps to the door, takes one glance, and without a word pulls the door open, ushers them in and shuts it at their back. Several locks are bolted into place.

"Upstairs," the brother says.

Slowly, Katniss climbs the steps. She's never been upstairs, or any further than a step or two inside the kitchen. Both men hover behind her back, not asking questions, and though that is reliving, Katniss feels ill at ease. _Where's Peeta? _she starts to ask, but stops when she sees the shape laying across a couch in the living room at the top of the steps.

"The other couch," Mr. Mellark suggests and Katniss sighs when the weight of Prim is out of her hands. "I'll get something to clean that." He gestures to the knife wound on Katniss' forehead and she nods, mumbles a thank you.

After checking Peeta's forehead, the brother lays out a few gauze and a shirt, then departs in a detached, wondering sort of way. They have to be for Katniss, because aside the cold sweat soaking through his clothes, Peeta has no other signs of bodily fluids that are in need of mopping. She uses all of them cleaning up Prim's face and stopping the nose bleed. So absorbed in the work, crouched over her sister, she doesn't notice when Mr. Mellark steps back in the room, placing a towel, rubbing alcohol, and a bowl of water on the coffee table. Not until he speaks; "Feel free to anything you can find, call us if there's anything you can't. It's better the lights stay off, only use the lamp, or we'll have trouble with the Peacekeepers.." a pause, and she looks up at him through sweaty, bloody flyaways. "I hope she gets better."

"Me too."

The man leaves her to the silent, dim living room that smells of stale flowers and butterscotch pudding.

Once she's all patched up to the best of Katniss' ability and has a new shirt, Prim falls asleep rolled in a blanket found on the arm of the chair. For awhile Katniss just sits there with her, closing her eyes, glad to rest.

It's in the early hours of the morning when she sets herself down beside the bowl of water and uses the towel to blot at her face and neck and chest. Her shirt is ruined and since there was only one shirt set out she goes down the hall in hopes of finding a closet or dresser. Mr. Mellark had said feel free. She finds a room, clearly male, and rummages in the drawers, but the shirts are too big. They must have been Rye's. The oldest brother had always been noticeably heftier.

The next room is locked. And the one after that a bathroom.

On the third she finds a smaller one, with two beds. One occupied. He sits up. "Something the matter?" the brother asks sleepily. "Is Peeta.."

"He's fine," she whispers. "I just need.. another shirt."

"Oh." He lays back down, rolls over. "The dresser closest to the door. That's Peeta's."

The idea of wearing his clothes is unnerving for more than one reason, but Katniss shakes herself. It's silly. To care about that stuff. It's just a shirt, fabric. She picks up the first one and marches down the hall. In the living room she pulls off her top without pausing and picks up the towel to mop up the blood – when a figure catches her attention.

"I must be sicker than I thought," Peeta says, and Katniss flinches, clutches the towel to her chest. Heat jumps in her face, unbearable, and she has to wait until her eyes adjust to the lightening to make out Peeta sitting against the arm of the couch, a glass of water in his hand, eyes somehow dull in the way Prim has been lately. It twists her heart – to see first her heartfelt, delighted Prim so vague, but then the eternal optimist Peeta to also be so lost.

Peeta squints at my face, his forehead scrunches in concern. "You're hurt."

_And shirtless, _but he doesn't seem to notice or care. "I –"

"Why would I dream that?" he asks, not to her, but himself, she realizes. He thinks he's dreaming. He sighs. "Can't even be good in.. and of course.."

"Peeta," Katniss says, voice hoarse.

"Is that my shirt? I hate that shirt.. that's weird.."

"_Peeta_."

Startled by the intensity, his eyes fly to hers. "Love?"

The name kick-starts her heart, but she ignores it. "You're not dreaming. You have a fever." Her eyes stray to Prim and Peeta turns and when he sees her, tiny body twisted around the blanket, lips stained with blood Katniss couldn't rub away – suddenly he is looking up, away.

"I'm sorry.. I.." He doesn't seem to know how to excuse anything. "I thought you weren't coming back."

Hundreds of things come to mind, to say. Each one more true than the last. The train, the Peacekeepers, Rory, Haymitch.. but all she says is, "I had no where else to go." She won't apologize, won't thank him, but she can stand there, until he nods.

Picking up the rubbing alcohol, still holding shirt and towel, Katniss leaves and goes to the bathroom she saw before. Carefully, silently, she goes about cleaning herself using the sink and towel, then hissing when she sanitizes the cut on her forehead. It's not too terrible, but if that old victor had been any more accurate she would have need stitches.. or a new eye. _Blind luck_, she decides as she balls the filthy towel up and returns to the living room.

This time Peeta is entirely moved. He sits beside Prim, who he is supporting up and aiding in drinking from a glass of water. She gulps greedily, and when that one is empty he already has another for her to down.

Katniss silently picks up the empty glass and goes to the kitchen to fill it. On her return Peeta smiles at her and takes it, helping with that one too. And it bugs her, because she has an urge to push him aside and take his spot – instead, she sits on the edge of the couch he had occupied.

Prim is fast out again once she's had her fill. Peeta hand lays heavy on her forehead. "How long has she been sick?"

"Started this morning."

"It can take up to three days to take the strong ones," he says, intoning hope.

"Or months, for the strongest," she whispers. Her eyes catch his, but dance back to Prim.

"I don't have the same thing."

"But what else could it be?" Katniss shakes her head. "It just has to be a mutation."

"Even if that were true.." Peeta frowns at her. "You're forehead. It's bleeding through."

Katniss touches the bandages, her fingers coming away red. Sighing, she moves to heft herself up, but Peeta reaches for the gauze and medical tape and tosses them to her. As she starts to go about re-bandaging she can't help but notice his disapproval. "What?" she snaps.

"Have you ever done that before?"

"Of course," Katniss says, heavy sarcasm. "It's an off day when I don't get knifes thrown at my face."

"Peacekeepers?" he asks, disdainfully, and doesn't wait for an answer. "Do you want help with that?"

Grudgingly Katniss just hold out the objects. He takes them and moves to sit beside her and she crosses her arms over her chest, lifting her chin to scowl beyond his shoulder. Peeta is unfazed. Though he sits closer to her than he's ever done, and she can feel his breath feather her cheek, he seems completely focused on the bandaging of her forehead. Katniss notices only the heat of his fever radiating off of him.

"How long have you been.." Sick isn't the right word, because he's been sick since Delly. "..laying there?"

"Awhile. A couple days. I guess I collapsed and couldn't really get back up."

Katniss tries to look at his leg, but Peeta steadies her face between his hands and tilts it back upward and forward. "Can't make it straight if you move all around," he says. Her eyes stray down as far as they can, then. "I'm wearing sweats," he adds, when he has to straighten her face again. "Besides.. you don't want to see it."

"Has it gotten worse?"

Peeta presses his lips together and doesn't answer.

"It's gotten worse." Dread fills Katniss' chest. "How.." and she is surprised by the pressure in her throat, because she is thinking of Prim now. Of her family. How she gave them all the shots, even Peeta, and even he is not better – but more importantly, how they didn't work. How she failed. "How did this happen?" she find herself saying, soft and near so unstable she should be embarrassed. "What's happening?"

Her and Gale have spoken their theories, and her and Prim have whisper their fears, but Katniss hasn't let the situation overwhelm her. Not until she's watching Prim struggle for her every breath in her sleep. She's exhausted, aches all over, and it takes her a moment to realize that the sudden thing she is clutching in her hand is Peeta's.

He deliberates to answer her.

The dullness of his eyes is better now, but still remaining.

She wonders if he even really _knows_ or _believes_ what's going on.

"There's a meeting tomorrow, in the square. That's what the Peacekeepers were saying, at least. They say they'll have answers, they spoke of cures.." he shares this, almost reluctantly. As if afraid to give falseness. "But.."

"But?" Katniss whispers, squeezing his hand, hoping she is encouraging.

He looks at their intertwined fingers, dazed. When he lifts his head his eyes seem glazed and his other hand pushes hair behind her ear. She shrinks away from the touch. Peeta notices; his hand drops and he draws back – and she is about to protest, but then she realizes he's rolling up his pant leg.

Already she sees it's worse. His toes are black, completely. His feet to the ankle. To the shin. The knees is a tangle of veins that are overlapping, like overgrown ivy vines, climbing to the top of a wall. Slowly but surely the leg is becoming a solid dead color. When I skim a finger down his calf, the skin is ice cold to the touch and he doesn't even _shiver_.

Peeta is staring hard at the limb, in thought. "Katniss."

"Yes?"

"Do you know what year it is?"

"I–"

"Do you know _which_ Hunger Games this is?"

Katniss stares at him for a moment. The conversation is too similar to her and Gale's. "Of course."

Peeta runs both palms down the sides of his leg. "The reaping is in a week."

"But – "

"The winner of the Seventy-fifth Hunger Games wins their district the cure, Katniss."

The sentence knocks her breathless. It bewildering for a moment, unbelievable – then it becomes completely understandable. This time Peeta slips his hand into hers and holds fast. "It'll make for one of the most desperate fights they've ever seen," he says. "They're not saving themselves, but their entire district. Their mothers, fathers, brothers.. sisters.. cousins, neighbors..."

It does make sense. It does. She just can't image the same plague haunting the other districts, such as 1 and 2. But they must be. She wonder if the train supplies ignored the other districts, too. If they thought to make all the districts feel as though they were goners. And then to show up, promising a cure.. but only if.. only at the cost.. only with victory and if they are entertained by it.

"District Twelve hasn't had a winner in at least twenty years," Katniss intones.

By his face she sees Peeta is already well aware of this fact. He is watching her carefully.

"You think I'm going to volunteer?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Are you going to try to convince me not to?"

"You may be the only one in the district who can win," he says, but immediately he adds, "But I'd hate to see what the Capitol does to you. To anyone put in the arena. What they're making us do simply to save the people we love.." she can tell he is sickened by the whole thing. Anyone should be.

Prim still stutters in her sleep, coughing sometimes. "It'll be too late. Three days isn't long enough. A week until reaping, then a week until the Games even start.. then who knows how long they'll last.."

Peeta stops her. "That's why they took the sick, Katniss. They'll keep them alive for the time being."

"What?"

"The Peacekeepers came around today to put all the sick in quarantine. They say it'll prolong them, but only just."

"Guess they couldn't have the source of their motivation dying, huh?" Katniss mutters, rubbing a temple, and then – after a slight hesitation – letting both her hands sit in his. His thumb rubs up the length of her wrist, soft, light, soothing. Then something hits her. "Why aren't you in quarantine?"

More importantly, _why had Gale sent Rory to tell them to hide Prim? _Did they not know what was going on? Were they convinced they'd kill her? Gale is always suspicious and might not have believed their promises for prolonging the infection at all. Then again he would believe the Capitol's sick new Quarter Quell special –

Katniss is distracted by the way Peeta laughs. "What?" she asks.

"Nothing, it's just.." He shrugs, looking down. "I figured I would.." Again he shakes his head.

"You would what?"

He runs his hand through his hair. Much like the way he had when he confessed to her that he had.. _feelings_. He's nervous, doubting himself, and when he leans back in the couch so he's half laying down she realizes just how spent and out of it he really is. Has he just been trying to be strong? Is she so unobservant in this thought to be two-sided conversation?

"It was a stupid idea."

"Tell me anyway."

"Just thought, since I was dying anyway.. that if no boy volunteered.. if the one pulled was.. I don't know.. young, or healthy, that I would take his place. Or something. I'm not sure if I was really awake when I thought up this plan." His smile is dim and sheepish, face red, palm sweaty in hers.

Katniss pulls my hands free and stands, allowing him to lay out all the way. The idea is a strange one. Even with a fully functioning leg he would have not done well in the Hunger Games – at least not any better than most. Especially compared to Careers. But it's the compassion behind the almost child-like thought that drives her to put a blanket over him. Even on the verge of death he's thinking of sparing others pain –

Then she halts. No. He's not on the verge of death.

He can still live. Prim can still live.

She looks at both of them; Peeta now muddling in sleep that he must have been fighting, and Prim choking slightly before rolling over and burrowing deeper in the pillows. There's still hope. Peeta just told her all about it. Only.. at a price. For Primrose, though, that has to be worth it. To watch her drown in her own blood, or face the Hunger Games? Which would be worse?

The answer is obvious.

Peeta's words stick with Katniss as she walks toward the group of Peacekeepers standing in the middle of the street. With a hand tangled in the too large shirt, that smells of musk and sweat and faintly, peppermint, around her stomach, the words play over and over again: _"You may be the only one in the district who can win."_

Until she's standing in front of them, and she must steel herself.

"Yes?" one barks. "What is it?"

"There's two more, in the bakery, upstairs. Someone tried to hide them."

They don't ask how or why she knows, and she doesn't stay long enough to watch it happen.


	9. Chapter Nine

_A/N: And you were worried you wouldn't see much of Peeta in the later chapters... _Anyway, here's the next chapter, a little short, sorry. Hope you like it. And don't go guessing what happens next, because you probably have no idea what I have planned. Reviews are love. Thank you for reading. - Taryn

* * *

Chapter Nine

On the way home, all she thinks is that a week without Primrose is going to be a torturous one.

Katniss returns home exhausted and, at this point, panicked, as she begins to realize the massive responsibility of what she's promised to herself. This isn't going to be easy, this isn't going to be fun, and there's no guarantee for her survival, or the prosperity of all of District 12 if she fails.

The moment she step into the house the rest of her family is waiting to ambush her. Her mother's head begins to shake at the sight of Katniss' empty hands, but she's quick to explain where Prim is and that she's safe – for now. And that's when Gale jumps in, indignant, because of course he knows what Katniss mean, of course he sees the purpose in her eyes. "You can't," he says, with no real authority. Because how can she not? Primrose is at stake and he knows she won't let him do it… and there's no way they can do it together. Someone has to go. "You can't!" he repeats, as if adding volume will make it real.

When the first wave of tears hits her, still standing there in the living room, Gale wraps her his arms and holds on so tight she's half-sure he's the only reason her pieces don't come apart and fall all over the floor. She tells them about her forehead, about Haymitch but she cuts out Peeta, she tells them only that she heard the news, not from who she heard it from, and that's what led her to a decision. No one detects the deception – and if they do, if there is suspicion it is buried within tides of worry.

A pale-faced Rory perched on the edge of the coach catches Katniss' gaze over his brother's shoulder. He just stares at her. A tear escapes and he dashes it away hurriedly. "I want to, too," he says, startling the whole room, but Katniss. "I'll go in the Hunger Games for her."

Immediately his mother objects, but he bursts, "But you're letting Katniss do it!"

"Don't be stupid," Gale snaps. He turns to his brother, letting go of Katniss, and rearranges his face into the fiercest expression he can. "You're barely twelve and the odds of you winning the Hunger Games are lower than Katniss'. Not to mention that _if_ she happens to get far enough in the Games, dragging you along, it'll eventually come to an ugly end."

"Then just let me –"

"Let you go alone?" Hazelle says. "Rory, you don't have to do this to prove you love her."

Obviously she touched right where he's sensitive because the tears come again, fast and too many to wipe away. Katniss watches in a daze as Hazelle wraps her second-eldest son in her arms and he sobs into her neck. Can someone love Primrose that much to feel this way about her impending death? Other than her, of course. But seeing those kinds of emotions in a boy so young, the kinds of emotion that broke her mother…

She looked to Gale, to find him not watching his younger brother's meltdown, but _her_.

_Were all of Hazelle's sons prone to this type of love?_

Katniss shook the thought from mind. It didn't matter. Rory has obviously suffered this last winter, seeing the corpses in the street, coming across the sick in the snow where they beg for your time, and there were the three patients that Mrs. Everdeen had seen in the Hawthorne's own home. Rory had helped Katniss and Gale mop the blood off the floors. He'd seemed fine then. Maybe knowing what the sickness will do to Primrose is what has unhinged him, on top of everything else.

"You'll need to start eating more," her mother speaks for the first time. Eyes all fall to her. She's not crying. In fact her eyes have that glassy look Katniss is all too familiar with. Mrs. Everdeen moves straight for the kitchen, as if on auto-pilot, and when Katniss turns to follow, to comfort her mother despite it's her who is at risk, Hazelle rushes forward to relieve her of the duty. One soft touch to Katniss' arm, a heavy look passed, and Gale reels Katniss back into his chest. Hazelle joins Mrs. Everdeen in cooking, using gentle tones and eye contact. She knows just how to handle her. That's good, because at this rate Mrs. Everdeen just might lose both her daughters in one blow, and there's got to be someone who knows how to do it when they're lost.

With Rory balled up on the coach, his little sister holding his hand silently, and Vick hunched on the floor, Gale pulls Katniss to the bed she's been sharing with Posy and Prim, and slowly she gets ahold of the gasping, rubbing away the tears. "I remember our promise, Katniss," he whispers, lest their mother's hear… "but…"

"But?"

"But are you sure about this? The Hunger Games?"

"No." She's not sure about anything anymore; everything seems off with Prim gone, and it's only been a few hours since they were together at the bakery. "But I have to do this. If not for Prim, the district." District 12 is not adored by the Capitol citizens like the rest. She's certain if the citizens know about the sickness moving through the districts their voices wouldn't shout for hers, but more likely the Career districts where their favorite victors reside. Winning their favor and sponsorship never seemed more impossible.

"Then I'll help." Gale always seemed strong; Katniss has never seen him cry, not even for his father, so she's surprised by the helplessness in his face as he clutches her by a bicep and asks, "What can I do?"

It takes her a moment to come up with an answer. Right then she thinks all he can do is keep holding her, but she shakes that off, because there's only so much time she can spend in shock. Gale has the right of it; she needs to start preparing, she needs every advantage she can get. Her mother is right as well, she needs to put on weight, or at least bulk up from the severity of last winter. (She can still trace the ridge of her hip, and count her ribs.) "After we eat, let's go to the forest and shoot." The fresh air and silence will do her good, she thinks, and if the odds are in her favor there will be a bow in the arena.

But as she's spooning the richly seasoned soup at the table an hour later, Gale abruptly draws away to examine her clothes, just noting the difference. "Whose shirt is that?" he asks, and everyone who had been pretending not to be watching Katniss stops the pretense, curious, but unwilling to say it aloud.

She knew this would come. "How do you know it's not mine?"

"I know you don't own a shirt that expensive. That has got to be a hundred percent cotton, and that blue dye is too rich, and I don't see any holes patched anywhere. Whose is that?" He won't drop it. "It's too big, too…" _It's a guy's shirt, _he means and Katniss sighs exasperatedly.

"I borrowed it from Peeta. Mine was covered in blood. Alright?"

Gale doesn't look satisfied with that answer, but Hazelle moves to defuse anything that can turn sour. "You saw Peeta last night?" Hazelle asks, sitting at the table. "That's where you went after you left?"

"After the Victor's Village, yes," she says. She returns to her soup, not wanting to see that everyone is listening. "I didn't know where else to go and Prim needed a place to hide… I thought she did at least, so I went to the bakery."

"And that's who turned Prim in?" Gale demands.

"No, I turned her and Peeta in myself. And afterward I didn't go back to return the shirt because I didn't want to know what Mr. Mellark would say about that. For all I know he hates me now."

_And I know Peeta will, _she thinks, but she won't share that aloud.

"Peeta's sick?" Gale seems stunned.

"He's still alive?" Mrs. Everdeen asks at the same time, her expression similar.

"Yes." By now her words are blunt and short, she doesn't need to talk about this with them; it's not like it'll help her in the coming Hunger Games, nor does Peeta concern any of them. She doesn't want to think about him, or the fact that at any moment now he's going to realize she handed him over to the Peacekeepers and feel a sting of betrayal he won't forget any time soon. "But he and half the district won't be alive after the next three weeks unless I can focus on what's important now and train."

"She's right," Hazelle offers, then hesitates… "Katniss… I know I shouldn't ask this. But –"

"How long has Peeta been sick?" Gale cuts in.

Mrs. Everdeen sits across the table from Katniss, laying a silencing hand on Gale's forearm. "You haven't… I know it's none of my business, but I have to know. We all do. Cause if you're…" Her eyes travel downward and Katniss feels anger open up in her like a pit.

"Are you asking if something was going on between me and Peeta?" she demands.

"Yes," her mother says bluntly. Katniss can feel she's a patient right now, not a daughter. It stings, almost as much as Gale and Hazelle's eyes burning on her face. "It doesn't matter, really. But the pos –"

"If it doesn't matter then why are you asking me?"

"Because if that Townie got you sick, how do you expect to win the Hunger Games?" Gale spits.

Katniss whirls on him. "Don't call him a Townie. Are you angry just because of where he comes from? Would it make you happier if it was a guy from the Seam? He has a name and Peeta would use yours."

"So you were, then," Gale replies, completely missing her point. "You and him?"

"No," she says, scowling. "You know how I feel about dating. There's nothing between us like that. But I owed him for something he did for me once, and I paid it back. He didn't get me sick."

"Paid him back how?" Gale presses and the implication in his gaze makes Katniss sick to her stomach.

"Gale," his mother snaps before Katniss reacts. "Why don't you go outside and clear your head?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"_Gale_."

The fact that he thought she would do something like that made Katniss angrier. Across the table Gale held her hard stare, and there was disgust and anger and hurt in his eyes, and the intent to hurt back, too. How can her best friend, the one person who is supposed to know her best, think she could do something that was the exact opposite of what she'd ever do? At first, she rationalized herself, like she always does. She shouldn't let it bug her, Gale is just going through the same emotional rollercoaster everyone else in the District is. He's angry at the Capitol, and is channeling it at her, at Peeta – because he's a much easier target than the government. He's frustrated because he knows he can't help Primrose, or the rest of his family if the shots continue to fail, and he's angry at Katniss for leaving him to go to Hunger Games while he twiddles his thumbs at home… She's willing to bet he felt left out still from when her and Madge had gone out in search of the shots, and is working off some of that as well.

But then… the rationalizations seem useless. And _unfair_. And somewhere in her chest, she wants to take the drive he has to hurt her, and take the knife and heave it back at him, right where it'll burn.

"Fine," Katniss says, softly. "I kissed him." It's not a lie, and she sees Gale's fists contort on the table top, a long, hard exhale escaping him, deflating him. "But only once," she adds when she knows she's gone too far, and she turns to look at her mother. "It didn't get me sick; I'd be dead by now if it did."

"Was this after I told you he was sick?" her mother asks.

Katniss shrugs.

"Wait," Gale says, leaning over the table, eyes narrowed. "You mean your mom told you he's sick, that he's got the bug and that touching him could get you sick, too, and you still did it? Are you just stupid or did you want to die? You were going to take the risk of abandoning your family to kiss some Tow –"

"Stop turning it all around," Katniss snaps. But of course she didn't explain it all, so he doesn't know that he's twisting the innocence of the story. She did it to pay him back. She did it to save him – and has failed to boot. If she tells the full story and she talks about the shot, what if they puzzle out she never took hers? Then Gale can take that and throw it in her face, saying she'd rather see a Townie live than herself, and by that factor, her family, too.

And if she were to tell the full _full_ story, she'd have to tell them about the bread and dandelions.

Which seemed more pointless than the last story. All of this was pointless.

"Look," she says. "I'm not sick so all that doesn't matter anymore, can we forget this? I'll go change my shirt now and then I think I'll go out and shoot arrows on my own for a few hours. Tomorrow…"

"Tomorrow we are all going to help you train," Hazelle finishes. "In some way or another. Agreed?"

Surprisingly it's Rory who agrees first, from the living room, and her mother nods soon after, staring at her hands tented on the table. Gale gives a shake of his head and shoves himself to his feet and leaves the house – to go where, Katniss doesn't care, as long as she doesn't find him out in the forest later.

Twenty minutes later, she's pulling her father's bow from its hiding place and the spring breeze on her skin feels better than the ghost of Prim's blood. As she toes through the thawed dirt, she wonders what the Capitol is doing to preserve the sick. She'll have to visit her sister before the Reaping. Since the Justice Building had already been cleaned out the quarantine took place in its walls. Tomorrow she'll jog over there and try to instill as much hope into Primrose as she can. And while she's there she'll ask after Peeta because… well, she feels bad about turning him in. That's all. She won't go to see him.

To her left the bushes stir. Katniss goes completely still. She crouches and niggles an arrow loose of the sheath slung around her shoulders. It's something big; she can tell by the way the leaves move. It could be a wild dog – it seems like the most likely possibility. She scopes the nearby trees; three down from her is the best for climbing and escape, though it's not ideal.

Or it could be a bear. Or Gale. Or a mountain lion.

Silently the arrow slides into place.

She shifts her weight, burdening the bow on her knee, preparing to stand and pull –

But her heel knocks over a rock, that breaks a twig and the thing in the bushes goes still, too.

She can feel her heart in her throat, waiting, holding her arms stiff, knees aching to stand.

All at once a doe bursts from the leaves, galloping hard away from her, and Katniss leaps to her feet. She draws within her next breath – excited suddenly, because deer is _rare_ and meaty – but the moment she drops her eyes to aim, staring down the length of the arrow's shaft, her gaze catches on her hand.

She releases too late, and not really paying attention to where the arrow lands.

The bow falls from her hands and she opens her palms to her face, perplexed.

There. Down the length of her ring finger. A twisting line of black.

"No."

_No, no, no._

Katniss slumps to her knees, pulling her hand as close to her face as she could and still _see_ it. The closeness did nothing to change what she saw, only worsen it. There were more, smaller veins, already gone bad. Miniature, almost invisible, hardly noticeable. She flexed her hand and she waited feel a throb or a pang or some sort of pain – but there was none. Peeta was right. She can't feel anything.

She pulls out her hunting knife without thinking, and draws the tip of the blade down the length of the worst one; the only vein in her hand that connects to her heart. Blood leaks out, as black as it appeared from the outside; tar-like, thick and sticky and foul smelling.

Frantically she searches her head for how this could be. It can't be Peeta; refuses it to be him.

But if it wasn't him, than it was Prim. And she knows it was. She let it happen, in her state of protector for her little sister. She remembers swiping her forehead where the knife nicked her with hands covered in Prim's blood. She remembers the taste of rust on her tongue when Prim sputtered blood into her face.

And for some reason she'd assumed it wouldn't matter. That she was immune.

That the odds would be in her favor just that once.


End file.
